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#PerformanceMatters is the hashtag performers have been using to generate support for their upcoming vote among fellow voice actors and game players.

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Some developers qualify for bonuses after the game ships, either for getting certain scores on Metacritic or hitting sales targets, but it’s not universal. Gearbox Software is one of the few developers who actively brags about offering profit sharing to employees, claiming its paid out $40 million since 2010.

In SAG-AFTRA’s FAQ about the vote, here’s what they cited as evidence for why performers should qualify for bonuses and other payouts after release:

“The top games make money. This industry has grown, boomed and morphed into something bigger and lucrative than any other segment of the entertainment industry, and it continues to do so. The truth is, back end bonuses are not uncommon in the video game industry. Last year, Activision’s COO took home a bonus of $3,970,862. EA paid their executive chairman a bonus of $1.5 million. We applaud their success, and we believe our talent and contributions are worth a bonus payment, too.”

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Most developers are not COOs or executive chairmans, however, as pointed out by Arkane Studios level designer Shawn Elliott, formerly of Irrational Games.

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When Grand Theft Auto IV was released in 2008, voice actor Michael Hollick spoke with The New York Times about how little he received for voicing Nico Bellic, despite the game going on to sell millions and millions of copies.

“Obviously I’m incredibly thankful to Rockstar for the opportunity to be in this game when I was just a nobody, an unknown quantity,” Mr. Hollick, 35, said last week over dinner in Willamsburg, Brooklyn, shortly after performing in the aerial theater show “Fuerzabruta” in Union Square. “But it’s tough, when you see Grand Theft Auto IV out there as the biggest thing going right now, when they’re making hundreds of millions of dollars, and we don’t see any of it. I don’t blame Rockstar. I blame our union for not having the agreements in place to protect the creative people who drive the sales of these games. Yes, the technology is important, but it’s the human performances within them that people really connect to, and I hope actors will get more respect for the work they do within those technologies.”

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Hollick was paid $100,000 for roughly 15 months of work. According to Take-Two, GTA IV made more than $600 million for the company in just three weeks.

This is not the first time the industry has butted head with performers. When Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo worked at MTV, he reported on a similar standoff from 2005, in which a strike was narrowly avoided by a new agreement that increased minimum pay for sessions, mandatory rest periods, and more advanced warnings about what the actor would be recording that day.

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The actors were not able to extract residuals from game publishers in 2005, and if it doesn’t happen this time, we may already know the reason why, per an LA Times report during negotiations:

“Game publishers argue that their current offer is generous. They resist sharing their profits, contending that voice actors play a small part in the development of a video game and aren’t the reason consumers buy them.

Attorney Howard Fabrick, who heads a negotiating committee representing eight game publishers, said that granting residuals would open the door to requests from scores of others in the game development chain.

“That would set a precedent for hundreds of other people who created a game to say, ‘What about us?’” Fabrick said.”

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The industry is worried it would open the floodgates. A crucial difference between voice talent and developers, however, is that one is unionized. It would be incredibly difficult for developers to find a way to take a collective stand.

There are plenty of reasons developers should unionize, of course, which Kotaku has demonstrated in stories many times over the years, but it hasn’t happened.

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As for what happens with gaming’s voice actors, we’ll have to wait and see.