Some developers not as enthusiastic at videogame voice actors's demands amid the possibility of a strike

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Actors get royalties for all other performances, so it's expected that they will want royalties for video game performances. But unlike movies and TV shows it is not that actor's inclusion in the game that sells the game. CoD:AW would have sold what it sold regardless of whether or not Kevin Spacey was in the game.

Also, do camera crew, 3D animators, SFX techs etc get royalties from movies and TV shows? I don't think they do. I completely sympathise with devs regarding their remuneration in the same way I completely sympathise with non-performing crew who work on movies and TV shows. The anonymous champions of these industries are commonly highly underpaid for the very skilled work they do. But the actors have a strong precedent for what they're demanding whereas the devs do not. And really, the devs, who are mainly not unionised, and in many cases deliberately so, should be supporting the actors and at the same time asking actors to support better pay and conditions for them. I do think Actors have historically been very selfish in terms of supporting non-performing crew and it is about time they showed some solidarity for everyone who creatively contributes to games and movies/TV.

One thing though, is that normally royalties are only paid for secondary revenues of movies and TV shows. In the initial theatrical run the actor doesn't get paid extra, and they don't get paid extra for the first time a TV shows is aired. They get royalties for syndication to other networks, for DVD/Blu-ray sales and for re-releases. So how would you work out royalties for a game? A game doesn't have those secondary revenues, all a game does is sell to people in the same way it did when it first released. That means actors don't really qualify for residuals. If a game is remastered, or remade re-using the same voice work THEN the actor would have a claim on residuals, because that is secondary revenue in a way. And of course when a game is re-done in some way devs are getting paid for re-working on the game, so there's comparability. Perhaps one could argue that things like GOTY editions of games are also secondary releases, so perhaps actors should get residuals for that. But I think that's harder to argue for compared to remasters and remakes. I definitely think, for instance the people who did voice work for God of War should be getting residuals for all the re-releases of the GoW games on PS3 and for GoWIII on PS4. Sony earned lots of extra revenue that was not anticipated at the time these games were made, and it is making money out of the acting work. All the actors on TLOU should have got royalties from TLOUR sales. The cast of Uncharted should definitely get royalties for the Nathan Drake Collection. The Halo cast should all get royalties for MCC, and the Gears Cast should get royalties for Gears Ultimate. The acting cast for Resident Evil should get royalties for the RE-make. I think these things are all fair demands for the actors.

The other thing is, if publishers had to pay royalties for re-masters they might be more judicious about what remasters they make, and only make remasters of games that actually deserve the treatment. The publisher will earn less money from remasters if they have to pay actor royalties, which means they won't see them as cheap ways to make money without having to invest in making actual new games. They probably would still be cheap sources of revenue compared to entirely new games, but they won't be as cheap, and so they will have a higher sales target in order to make a remaster project pay off.

I say yes to actor royalties, but only under specific conditions.