Voice actress Hellena Taylor, known for playing Bayonetta, has taken to Twitter to dispute a claim made by PlatinumGames. Earlier this month, it was revealed that the role of Bayonetta had been recast, and that Jennifer Hale would be taking over for Hellena Taylor, because of scheduling conflicts making it difficult to reprise the role, at least according to PlatinumGames. However, shortly after that announcement, Taylor posted a series of video messages on Twitter, explaining that the decision had nothing to do with any difficulties in regard to timing or scheduling, and instead was due to the fact that Platinum offered only $4,000 for her to voice act the entire game. She then asked for Bayonetta fans to boycott the game, and instead take the money they would have spent purchasing the game, and donate it to a charity.

I understand that boycotting this game is a personal choice and there are those that won’t, and that’s fine. But, if you are someone who cares about people, who cares about the world around you, who cares about who gets hurt with these financial decisions, then I urge you to boycott this game.

Taylor says she only wanted a livable wage for her performance and fair payment for the time and effort that voicing the protagonist of a video game franchise that has sold over $450 million dollars. PlatinumGames had made Taylor reaudition for the role of Bayonetta, because "sometimes voices change with time", but she was once more chosen to voice the title character in Bayonetta 3. After she was given the part, though, she was given "an insulting offer" by the company. This prompted Taylor to send a letter to the director of Bayonetta 3, Hideki Kamiya, who sent her back a "final offer" of $4,000 to voice all the lines in the game.

Friends, Worldlings, Bayonutters. Hear ye!#PlatinumGames #Nintendo #Bayonetta #Bayonetta3 #Bayonutters #Boycott #NintendoEurope #NintendoAmerica #NintendoJapan pic.twitter.com/h9lwiX2bBt

— Hellena Taylor (@hellenataylor) October 15, 2022

She also spoke about Jennifer Hale, who will be the voice of Bayonetta in the upcoming game, and that she wishes her well, but that she also believes that Hale "has no right to say she is Bayonetta". Taylor mentioned that speaking up about this was a breach of her non-disclosure agreement, but that she has nothing of monetary value to be taken, so she decided to speak up.

Hideki Kamiya responded to the claims with a chain of various Tweets, and a wave of blocking people who Tweeted at him--something he is known to do--to the point that it got him temporarily restricted on the platform. His main reply to Taylor was, "Sad and deplorable about the attitude of untruth. That's what all I can tell now. By the way, BEWARE OF MY RULES", and while the latter half of the message sounds like a threat, it is moreso likely referring to Kamiya's tendency to block Twitter users for breaking his "rules".

People online were upset by this, and some even were blaming Jennifer Hale for taking the role at all. Hale has not yet made any comment on the matter, though she has notably liked numerous Tweets that claim she can't speak on the matter due to NDAs, or that she was unaware of the drama in the first place when she was cast. Other voice actors in the video game industry offered their input, such as Sean Chiplock, who said the $4000 appeared to be "union rate", and that he was paid "approx 2,000-3,000" for his work voicing Revali, Teba, and the Great Deku Tree in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Meanwhile, he says his two offscreen lines in the film Detective Pikachu earned him more money than his work on BOTW, and that even voicing characters in the indie game Freedom Planet was worth more than the voicing roles in BOTW, because unlike video game voice acting work, he was given sales royalties from the role.

 

[Deleted member 586536]

Yes. And y'know how much the average non-unionized pay is? $250. An hour. That's 4 sessions of 4 hours.





4000 / 16 = $250. That's 4 sessions of 4 hours, as the story's came through.

Which fits everything we've heard thus far.
If Recording finishes in 4 sessions of 4 hours (16 hours of work), then that means that 'for an entire game', the non-unionized price was $4000. There's no need to try to argue connotatively about this, semantically she was offered going rate, as a Voice actress with no popular roles outside of Bayonetta herself.

Edit: To kinda suffocate your argument: Bayonetta isn't exactly a voice-heavy, plot-heavy game.

There's an issue with you reasoning. your basing off an average, and using that metric to deduce sessions. We don't know how many sessions that was asked. Because there's several ways to reach the same 4k but with more hours behind it.
Additionally, voice actors who are in a prominent role are generally paid more.

 

[CompSciOrBust]

Programming is hard work. That´s why everyone wants to be a designer.

Programming isn't hard work unless you're a brainlet. Any idiot can learn to program. What's hard is acquiring other skills to apply programming to. Data science, finance, etc. The game dev and web dev industries are full of people suffering from Dunning Kruger syndrome and I resent them for it. If programming was hard then game devs wouldn't be facing crunch time because they would take a stand against it, but they know that the managers could step in and replace them with any random 17 year old off of the streets given they train them for a few weeks first.

Anyway I'ma duck out of this thread. Once again GBATemp's top minds have come in to explain why they're right and everyone else is wrong. It sounds like woke nonsense and that makes me sad! What? Knowledge of the games industry? No I have none of that, why do you ask? I sound like a fucking idiot? But I have common sense and autism so it is you who is wrong Marxist snowflake.

 

[VartioArtel]

There's an issue with you reasoning. your basing off an average, and using that metric to deduce sessions. We don't know how many sessions that was asked. Because there's several ways to reach the same 4k but with more hours behind it.
Additionally, voice actors who are in a prominent role are generally paid more.

It's called common sense. You're attempting to rile up an emotional argument because you view her as worth more than she is. She has a history in the gaming industry if you look up her IMDB - if she was such a competent VA, she'd have way more roles coming in for her ability. And excluding Bayonetta, it looks like at most 2-3 for any one company. What does this say? She has a horrible personality, more likely than not - which is confirmed by how she attempted to drag the new VA into the argument.

One's personality (how easy and agreeable they are), one's actual unique values (IE: unique ranges in voice/identifiability), one's ability to get a job done smoothly, etc, increase their rate.

Now, let's review the situation in hard facts: She was offered $4000. Her words.
The industry standard is $250 an hour, with 2 hours minimum sessions, for anyone.
$4000 / $250 is 16 hours, tops.
16 total hours over 2 hours sessions is a maximum of 8 sessions.

We heard tale that Hale completed the recording in 4 sessions of 4 hours. That's still 16 hours. In short, the expected total voice time was 16 hours, this is an indisputable fact.

So what does this all mean? Bluntly put, that Taylor was offered the same volume of work for the pay expected by a non-unionized worker for the expected volume of time that her replacement got.

This means that, unless you're trying to make a very disingenuous argument, that Taylor got offered what she's worth as a non-unionized worker. She wasn't even guaranteed more than $500 total for the work and they could have cut her off there for any reason - as the requirement, as I stated from the twitter link, was $250 over a 2 hour session minimum.

If for some reason the reality escapes you, I'll repeat it one last time: The Industry required minimum is $250 an hour. She was offered $4000, ergo, she had, at max, 16 hours of work, and nothing you can think of can change that fact. If she was paid more, then at $500 she'd simply have had to record 8 hours of work. The end result is, no matter what, they had no plans BEYOND 16 total hours of work.

 

[DoctorBagPhD]

Oh no someone who’s job is to sit down and talk into a mic is only offered 4k?

I don’t give a damn

Also idk what she was trying to gain from this. Career suicide? No one’s going to hire this lady for a gig after this little stunt lmao.

Shit take lol.

 

[mspy]

The lesson here is that you should do your research before committing your career to something that may not live up to your monetary expectations. It sucks especially if it's something you like doing and are good at it but as tempting as it may be sometimes you just gotta do what's best to have a stable life and not pursue something that only a few people are able to make a good living off. Unfortunately this is a case where the pie is not big enough for everyone to be well fed.

 

[VartioArtel]

The lesson here is that you should do your research before committing your career to something that may not live up to your monetary expectations. It sucks especially if it's something you like doing and are good at it but as tempting as it may be sometimes you just gotta do what's best to have a stable life and not pursue something that only a few people are able to make a good living off. Unfortunately this is a case where the pie is not big enough for everyone to be well fed.

it's exactly this. It seemed she thought Voice Acting was some huge paying job (in America) wherein she would get a fuckton of jobs at a high rate. The reality is she barely got a job a year at times, if every 2 years, and was mostly a low-tier name in the industry.

The reality came out that she either was not a popular actor or burned a lot of good will and fast in the Voice Acting sphere.

 

[Jonna]

What an absolute shit take by yet another simp.

The issue isn’t about her refusing a “low” ($4k for a two days’ job is low, ok) pay. The issue is that she’s trying to put up a huge controversy, trying to damage the company, the people working on the game AND THE NEW VOICE ACTOR. I get that people like you go “OOGA BOOGA” when you see a female in distress and have to rush to her aid, but maybe try using your head rather than your dick.

That's some ad hominem you're adding onto your argument.

 

[UltraDolphinRevolution]

Bayonetta is popular among fans but not that well-known. Boycotting the game just means increasing the chance of ending the series. Watching the trailer, I didn´t even notice that the voice actress has changed.

 

[City]

That's some ad hominem you're adding onto your argument.

Go back to Reddit.

 

[Jonna]

Go back to Reddit.

More ad hominem. Anyways, where's Reddit?

 

[MagnesG]

There's an issue with you reasoning. your basing off an average, and using that metric to deduce sessions. We don't know how many sessions that was asked. Because there's several ways to reach the same 4k but with more hours behind it.
Additionally, voice actors who are in a prominent role are generally paid more.

She herself answered in an interview saying the studio sessions for Bayonetta 2 last only a couple of days. That's says a lot about the speculated working duration.

so in your opinion, all voice actor of a main character should be paid 4k$ for a whole video game?

Of course it depends. If the game is an action game (around 15-20 hours), only 2-3 hours max cutscene, with much more characters involved, I'd say it's worth it. The person might only be involved at max 70% of that, maybe even 50% of the game. Pretty sure 16 hours of studio sessions can cover that aka more than $4k.

And if that person's portfolio only revolved around Bayonetta, with not much other prominent role, I would say the person can suck it up vs Hale with her portfolio. Hale woul've gotten more than what offered when she non-stop applied and got multiple roles over the years.

I really don't understand how come she can't even get a single semi major role except for Bayonetta, and even that last role is from Smash Bros Ultimate, in 2014 mind you.

She's unstable in a lot ways too based on the videos where she burned bridges for her future potential work with lots of other companies. Maybe she got turned down in a roundabout way due to her behavior.

 

[Viri]

Nobody could ever get the Nemesis from Resident Evil 3's voice right, except for the OG voice actor. It's too bad he's dead, and Capcom never used him ever again. I recently played through Umbrella Chronicles and Darkside Chronicles, and a lot of the voice actors being changed bothered the crap out of me. It's even more annoying, as a lot of the Resident Evil games have memorable quotes.

 

[pedro702]

so in your opinion, all voice actor of a main character should be paid 4k$ for a whole video game?

this is all subjective... you dont know how much lines a game has... heck if it was for a nintendo AAA game like for link, mario,luigi,etc they say afew words and do some grunts so 4000 would be way too much already for like 2 hours work or even less they need to record like 5 lines and afew grunts...

We have no idea how many days of work it was asked or how many new lines, for all we know maybe they would reuse most of the battle stuff from older games and only needed like a day or two for some cutscenes, so maybe she was being paid accordingly or not we have no idea.

 

[subcon959]

The only way to make a living wage from VA work is to be prolific and grind the crap out of it (just like the person who replaced her). It seems like she thought that because the franchise made hundreds of millions that she could do it off the back of just a single game. She probably should've leveraged her involvement in the first game to get tons more work over the last decade. Maybe that's what she tried and just wasn't successful, which would explain why she seemed so desperate to make this one count. Posh British accents are not unique unfortunately for her.

 

[scroeffie1984]

how much money did she get ?

 

[Darth Meteos]

if you actually read the statement, she says the 4k was the higher offer, they started even lower
pretty disgusting

 

[Guacaholey]

I´d do it for 800$. Done voice work before. I don´t have twitter. Someone contact the Japanese boss for me pls.

On a video game project like that I wouldn't even get out of bed for $800. Even if I were recording from home, several of my microphones cost more than that, so I'm not working for what works out to $50/hr. There's a reason union rates are often 3-5x that much.

 

[SkittleDash]

Without out her voice, Bayonetta just won't be Bayonetta anymore. Such a shame.

 

[FAST6191]

Something is worth what someone else is willing to pay. Seems like she fell on the wrong side of that equation for her desires and is going for the whining tactic (sometimes an effective one depending upon supply and constraints the supply manages to give itself). What difference it will make could vary between games, though hard to see it being the case here (not impossible but I would not put money on people caring as much as many other roles in games and elsewhere when it comes to recasting).

Interesting insight into things though. Haven't paid much attention to the VA world since listening to DVD commentaries of 2000s anime dubs.

Can't wait for AI voice generation and replication to come into play in a big way. Doing things more emotively is the next step as plain reading could probably replicate your own mother without issue.

Some in the thread might also need to read the difference between work for hire (you sign over the rights to what you made) and retained rights (every time it is used anew/for every copy sold/levels of remaster/whatever the contract specs then you get a taste). Seems to come up more than I expected it would these days. Will also be doubly interesting to see what goes for seeding/training and remixing based upon it if they continue to use voice actors for that purpose.

Video because why not and one case where it did make a difference and [dubbing companies hate him for this one simple trick] type deal

 

[Xzi]

If they offered her only $4000, then how much they're paying Jenifer Hale?

Way more, and that's the issue. In place of a "you're fired," they gave her an extreme lowball offer instead, and will be paying Hale at least five times as much to IMITATE Taylor's voice acting for the character. Just another example of why the whole industry needs to unionize.

Vast majority of users on this site were likely to pirate the game regardless, which is why it's hilarious all the conservative NEETs are claiming they'll be "buying ten copies" in light of this news.