Since July 2024, members of SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild — American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) have been on strike regarding the use of their work and likeness in games, and new concerns are poised to extend the strike. A message sent to union members cites “alarming loopholes” that threaten members and leave them “vulnerable to AI abuse,” based on information shared with Eurogamer.
Yuri Lowenthal, the voice of Spider-Man, spoke with Variety earlier this month and summed up the situation well. “It boils down to three things for me. One is consent that you don’t use the data that you’ve recorded from us to manufacture a performance that we had no say over. Two, compensation: if you’re going to do something like that, then we deserve a piece of that. Otherwise, actors won’t get paid anymore, and it’s all over for us. And three: control, being able to track that sort of stuff and know where it’s going.”
The situation is complicated, with numerous moving parts and varied opinions, but Lowenthal’s statement gives you the gist of the guild’s concerns. Many voice actors, including Jennifer Hale (the voice of female Shepard in Mass Effect)
Audrey Cooling, spokesperson for the video game producer’s party, responded to SAG-AFTRA’s concerns with the following statement (also shared with Eurogamer). “We have proposed a deal that includes wage increases of over 15 percent for SAG-AFTRA represented performers in video games, as well as enhanced health and safety protections, industry-leading terms of use for AI digital replicas in-game and additional compensation for the use of an actor’s performance in other games.”
SAG-AFTRA has not publicly responded to the latest proposal. Until an agreement is reached that the guild feels is beneficial to its members, the strike is likely to continue. SAG has encouraged non-affiliated members to turn down work until video game studios agree to the terms.
This is not the first time voice actors have striked over career concerns. Another strike lasted from late 2016 until 2017 over fair compensation, with an agreement finally being reached in September 2017.
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”