As part of the agreement, SAG-AFTRA members are seeing a general rise in compensation, starting at a rate of 15.17 percent on ratification of the deal, and then going up by an additional 3 percent each year starting from November 2025, until November 2027. The agreement also improves the maximum amount of overtime rate for performers, basing it on double scale.

One of the bigger aspects of the strike was the fact that SAG-AFTRA members wanted to have their jobs protected in an industry that has been seeing the rising use of AI for various creative aspects of development. The new agreement brings in “safety guardrails and gains” around the use of AI, including the requirement for companies to get consent from perfromers, as well as offer disclosure when it comes to these companies wanting to create AI-based digital replicas of the performers.

“I commend the strong leadership of Interactive Media Agreement Negotiating Chair Sarah Elmaleh, who remained steadfast through three years of hard bargaining while facing many challenging headwinds during a challenging negotiation cycle,” said SAG-AFTRA president Fran Descher in the press release. “This deal achieves important progress around AI protections, and progress is the name of the game! My sincere respect goes out to the entire video game performer community and their allies for their solidarity during the strike which provided the necessary leverage to secure this deal’s many essential gains.”

“We are pleased that SAG-AFTRA members have ratified a new Interactive Media Agreement, which delivers historic wage increases, industry-leading AI protections, and enhanced health and safety measures for performers,” said a spokesperson for the video game producers that signed the new agreement. “We look forward to building on our industry’s decades-long partnership with the union and continuing to create groundbreaking entertainment experiences for billions of players worldwide.”

For context, the strike had gone on for 11 months. In a statement, the SAG-AFTRA national executive director and chief negotiator, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, had also thanked the union members as well as allies who had taken part in the strike and helped raise support.

While the strike by SAG-AFTRA was an important one when it came to the union protecting its members against emerging technologies like AI, the strike has also had an adverse affect on the development of games. Hideo Kojima, for instance, had confirmed back in January that the development of both Physint and OD faced setbacks because of the strike, with casting for the former being outright suspended.

Interestingly, of the games in development affected by the strike, Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto 6 was made “exempt” from it. A spokesperson for the union confirmed this back in July 2024.

TELLTALE GAMES CLOSURE

Telltale Games had been flying high ever since they released the first season of The Walking Dead in 2012, acquiring major licenses left, right, and centre, from Batman and Borderlands to Game of Thrones and Guardians of the Galaxy and so many others. But that reckless purchasing of licenses was, as it turns out, a huge reason for their heartbreaking downfall. Telltale Games abruptly shut down in 2018, with hundreds of people losing their jobs in the ugliest way possible. For the audiences, too, it was a tough pill to swallow- not only did upcoming games like Stranger Things and The Wolf Among Us Season 2 get cancelled, but the closure happened with The Walking Dead’s final season was ongoing- though at least that, thanks to Skybound Games, managed to get completed.

Nintendo’s Second Mario Film

The Super Mario Bros. movie in 1993 was one of the most wretched things ever committed to film. Nintendo didn’t abandon the film industry entirely though – rumours have emerged of talks with Illumination Studio (of Despicable Me and Minions fame) to make a new Mario Bros. film. While not officially announced, this film won’t be live-action and instead goes the animated route. Interestingly, it’s already in production. We’ll have to wait for the reveal to get truly hyped but this is still incredible news.

Nintendo Announces SNES Classic

We knew it would happen, especially as Nintendo dashed all hopes and dreams of the NES Classic being restocked. But the SNES Classic was a thing and packed tons of our favourite titles into one awesome box. Even Star Fox 2 was included!

SAG-AFTRA Strike Resolution

Tucked away amidst the major announcements and crazy happenings was the news that the strike against video game publishers and developers by SAG-AFTRA would finally come to end. The strike was on behalf of voice actors across the industry and it became the longest strike ever for the organization before finally ending on September 23^rd. And thankfully, both sides came to an amicable agreement on the matter.

Metroid Prime 4

It never seemed like Nintendo would actually return to the Metroid Prime series. However at E3 2017, it finally confirmed what the rumours have said for so long – Metroid Prime 4 is coming and it’s for the Nintendo Switch. Who’s developing it? When will it be out?

Pokemon Switch

Probably not as tremendous or surprising as the Metroid Prime 4 announcement but Nintendo confirmed a new Pokemon title…for the Switch. Furthermore, this would be a core RPG title from Game Freak and the first in the series to ever debut on a home console. That’s big news, even if – once again – we have no information on a release date or even a name.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds

We’ve said it enough time but it bears repeating – it’s simply unbelievable that a game like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds would come out of nowhere from a relatively decent-sized studio and perform as well as it has. The crazy part? The game accomplished all of this while in Early Access. It’s set to release version 1.0 for PC on December 20^th but still.

Xbox One X Reveal And Price

After a year of teasing, the Project Scorpio codename and plenty of speculation, Microsoft finally confirmed its new Xbox console’s name as the Xbox One X. Not only that but at E3 2017, it also announced a retail price of $499 and a range of impressive specs. The console still has a ways to go but the Xbox One X dominated its fair share of reveals at E3.

Nintendo Switch Beats Wii U’s First Year Sales

It’s no secret that the Nintendo Switch has been a rousing success this year, overtaking the company’s earlier Wii U console in every way. However, it’s crazy to put that first year of sales into context. When the Wii U launched in November 2012, it sold about 13.56 million units as of March 2017. The Nintendo Switch has already sold 10 million units and it hasn’t been a full year since its launch. Think about that, especially when most of us wrote Nintendo off completely at several points.

Bayonetta 3 Announcement

Reggie Fils-Aime accomplished two tasks at this year’s The Game Awards – he silenced host Geoff Keighley and debuted something we’ve all wanted since forever. That something was Platinum Games’ Bayonetta 3 which saw our favourite bullet witch returning. When and how has yet to be revealed but it’s Bayonetta 3 for the Nintendo Switch and that’s enough.

Soulcalibur VI Announcement

“Do your souls still burn?” With that announcement, Bandai Namco ignited the crowd at The Game Awards and announced Soulcalibur VI. Sophitia and Mitsurugi were showcased in the glory of their younger days. Ring-outs, eight way direction and all sorts of classic mechanics returned with some new ones. Soulcalibur VI will be out in 2018 for Xbox One, PS4 and PC and we can’t wait.

Winner: PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds

Over 25 million copies sold, a 24 hour concurrent player peak on Steam of 2.8 million players, 1 million copies sold on the Xbox One in 48 hours, the most popular game on Twitch – this year was simply dominated by PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. Whether you loved it and bought into the hype despite its performance issues or hated it but kept coming back, Brendan Greene’s magnum opus was the star of 2017 in terms of sales and headlines.

Note: GamingBolt’s Game of the Year categories, nominations and awards are selected via an internal nomination, voting and debate process. You can check the rest of categories and the respective winners here.

The SAG-AFTRA strikes that have been affecting 160,000 actors and personalities in the united states, including a sizable portion of video game voice actors like Ashly Burch and David Hayter, since October 2016 will probably be ending soon. An agreement has been reached and the union has outlined some of the benefits that actors will receive.

“The terms of the tentative agreement, which was reached early Saturday morning, include a new bonus structure that provides an additional payment to performers. The bonus payment, which is due no later than the release date of the game, is based on the number of sessions worked on each game, beginning with a $75 payment on the first session and totaling $2,100 after 10 sessions worked.”

Transparency in contracts will also be improved as per Chief Contracts Officer Ray Rodriguez, the lead negotiator who said that “members are also protected by the disclosure of whether they will be required to use unusual terminology, profanity or racial slurs, whether there will be content of a sexual or violent nature and whether stunts will be required.”

Considering the strike is the longest in the union’s history, it’s good to see progress finally being made. Several high profile companies and divisions like Electronic Arts Productions, WB Games, Take Two Interactive Software, Activision Publishing, VoiceWorks Productions, Formosa Interactive and so on were the reason for the strike.

Among the many issues it caused was Ashly Burch not being able to return for properties like Life is Strange: Before The Storm. Burch voiced Chloe in Life is Strange and served as a consultant while non-union associated Rhianna DeVries voiced the character in Before The Storm.