Bayonetta 3 voice actor row sparks industry-wide conversation over standards of pay

gamesradar.com:

Long-serving Bayonetta voice actor Hellena Taylor has alleged being offered an ‘insulting’ $4,000 to reprise her role in the upcoming Bayonetta 3, encouraging fans to boycott the game, prompting an industry-wide conversation around the standards of pay. 

While Platinum Games had initially put Taylor’s absence from the game to “various overlapping circumstances” (opens in new tab), the actor explains on Twitter that it was very much about pay. The developer allegedly (opens in new tab) offered Taylor the role and lower remuneration following an audition, though Taylor eventually turned it down following dialogue with Hideki Kamiya that led to the final offer of $4,000. 

Following Taylor’s statements, Kamiya tweeted (opens in new tab): “Sad and deplorable about the attitude of untruth. That's what all I can tell now [sic]. By the way, beware of my rules.” 

The rules Kamiya refers to involve blocking users on Twitter, which seemingly happened en masse until their account briefly ceased to exist – at the time of writing, it has returned. 

Reacting to the news, one voice actor shares (opens in new tab) that they made more from their work on a 2D platformer called Freedom Planet 1 than voicing three characters in The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. As Sean Chiplock explains on Twitter, the $2,000-$3000 they got per game for their work on the Zelda games were weighted against the number of hours they spent in the studio, whereas Galaxy Trail threw sales royalties into the Freedom Planet 1 deal. 

Chiplock also says (opens in new tab) that voicing two Detective Pikachu characters was more lucrative than Breath of the Wild due to working a union-contracted day rate and royalties. “Yes,