The SAG-AFTRA National Board has called on all major video game companies to meet them at the negotiation table and join their ongoing writers strike.

The actors union made the call for video game companies to join the ongoing writers strike in Hollywood, as their umbrella stretches into writing for videogames as well as movies, TV, internet writers. Various major game publisher companies are mentioned in their announcement.

The writer’s strike this year has been a much-discussed and debated-about topic in many media circles, as it directly affects a lot of their livelihoods and operations in general, be it tangentially or directly. Among the grievances briefly mentioned are various concerns from many writers, producers, and organizers of this call-to-action.

The concerns range from the usage of AI to replace writers, voice actors, motion-capture-actors by the aforementioned large companies; as well as naturally claiming wages are too low now due to the skyrocketing cost of inflation in the United States.

Here’s the mission statement from SAG-AFTRA:

SAG-AFTRA brings together two great American labor unions: Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. Both were formed in the turmoil of the 1930s, with rich histories of fighting for and securing the strongest protections for media artists. Our members united to form the successor union in order to preserve those hard-won rights and to continue the struggle to extend and expand those protections into the 21st century and beyond. We are actors, announcers, broadcast journalists, dancers, dj’s, news writers, news directors, program hosts, puppeteers, recording artists, singers, stunt performers, voiceover artists and other media professionals. Our work is seen and heard in theaters, on television and radio, sound recordings, the internet, games, mobile devices, home video: you see us and hear us on all media distribution platforms. We are the faces and the voices that entertain and inform America and the world.