The studio behind the English Genshin Impact dub, Formosa Group, is being accused of not paying their Voice Actors correctly. The first allegations came from Brandon Winckler through his Twitter account yesterday, where they mentioned that despite trying to get in touch with them for a while, there was no response about their payment which was already four months late.
After being repeatedly ignored, Winckler decided to make it public. And if this couldn’t be bad enough, it turns out it wasn’t an isolated case. More VAs started to speak up about the same issues, which is hilariously bad, considering this is one of the most profitable games in the industry currently.
Payment is Allegedly a Recurring Problem for Genshin Impact Voice Actors
Instead of voicing a playable character, Winckler gave life to a minor but also important character: Kazuha’s friend, popularly known as Tomo (“Friend” in Japanese). Despite only appearing in a few cutscenes, he’s Kazuha’s main motivation throughout the whole Inazuma arc. Winckler also voiced other minor NPCs and enemies along the way.
But it seems that no VA is safe from such situations, as Corrina Boettger also made a similar statement about not being properly paid on their own personal accounts. Who do they voice, you ask? Just another minor character named Paimon. Not a big character, right? Definitely not the game’s mascot you’ll be hearing throughout the whole playthrough at all times.
But seriously, this has allegedly been a recurring problem that Voice Actors have persistently faced in their careers. Another infamous case is regarding the Jujutsu Kaisen 0 movie dub last year, where the lead voices reported abysmally low payments despite their prominent roles.
For all that we know, more Genshin VAs may have suffered the same but decided to remain quiet to avoid problems. But the responsible party is not Hoyoverse, as noted by Winckler. Formosa, which was also involved in a different actor’s payment scandal in 2016, is the one to blame for the delays, according to the VA.
Players demand that the studio start to pay their actors properly and expressed their dismay in various ways, such as in this Reddit thread about the situation. The whole situation is kinda ironic considering the ongoing Writers’ Guild strike, which was born from similar issues. And now for the first time in 60 years, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) is also joining them on a double strike which basically paralyzes the media industry. What a bad time to be an abusive manager.
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But since the Genshin dub is not a union project, like Winckler stated it should be, situations like these are unfortunately common, and there’s not much that VAs can do for themselves. This is another PR nightmare for Hoyoverse, so they might act quickly as they did during the Tighnari VA scandal last year.
We can only hope for the best, but we have no idea what the solution might be. They might demand a more strict payment for their talents from now on, or they may even change studios on a more drastic note. Honkai: Star Rail is already dubbed by a different studio, so there’s already a fairly good candidate right there.
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