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.

 

[TraderPatTX]

I wanna buy 10 copies now.

 

[yoshi_nysa]

This will probably backfire on her in the end.

 

[dragonblood9999]

If I could get 4k for 4-5 days work, hell yeah I'd take it. Something else had to have happened.
From what I can see she's only done Bayonetta and generic female role VA, not that I've looked too hard.

Anyways wasn't planning on getting the game. Too many games and too little time to play all the ones I want, nowadays.

 

[SG854]

I believe

 

[KeeperCP1]

Bruh how is 4000$ too low? A HECK TON 4000$ AND TAYLOR STILL COMPLAINS?!??!!
The boycott would ACTUALLY make sense if nintendo only gave them an ACTUAL very low price like 0.01$

 

[Snintendog]

Bruh how is 4000$ too low? A HECK TON 4000$ AND TAYLOR STILL COMPLAINS?!??!!
The boycott would ACTUALLY make sense if nintendo only gave them an ACTUAL very low price like 0.01$

Just Remeber the typical price for her work is 3200$ with the Union Hale is a apart of. Bayo 2 was VA'd completely in 4 sessions of 4 hours according to taylor herself. 16 hours of work for 4K sounds like she got a free session added as bonus.

 

[Marc_LFD]

people shouldnt get stuck in time imo

Stuck in time? The temporary new VA was nowhere near as charismatic, memorable, or iconic.

Ironside is perfect as Splinter Cell and that's why no one comes close. Just make a new stealth character.

 

[subcon959]

This... There's something more to this story that we don't know. To come out and plead with gamers to not support the game is fine... However, what's the reason for pushing her out? Hale isn't some B-List VA, so they weren't looking for a cheaper alternative. It's also not like they would just opt to replace a repeat VA of a known character just to get someone else. Something isn't right here...

If you listen to her in the videos it sounds like she values her talent more than the industry does.

I'm guessing she was initially offended by having to audition for the part, and then felt she was entitled to substantially more money than they were willing to pay. It also sounds like they upped the standard offer and she still wasn't happy.

Not sure what else there could be that we're not being told.

 

[MasterJ360]

No idea who is this Taylor chick is, but Hale is well versed VG actress, so everything is for the better.

Yeah Hale's VA career has dated all the way back to most of our childhood. If ppl actually look at Hale's resume that boycott will fall on deaf ears.

 

[DS1]

I played the first Bayonetta with the sound off and didn't realize it was voiced.

 

[pedro702]

Stuck in time? The temporary new VA was nowhere near as charismatic, memorable, or iconic.

Ironside is perfect as Splinter Cell and that's why no one comes close. Just make a new stealth character.

no way i prefer a vew va then killing sam fisher... so if mario va dies nintendo should kill mario? makes no sense lol.

 

[krakenx]

Without knowing how many words they expected from her it's impossible to tell whether that's a reasonable offer.
$50 to $200 per 100 words seems to be the going rate for video game voice acting work. She probably thought she would get paid like a Hollywood star. $4000 is a lot of money for a few hours work, but it's not enough to live off of.

https://performerlife.com/video-game-voice-actors/

 

[MetoMeto]

The only moral thing would be to pirate the game lol

Sadly, this isnt the first case that they underpay or flatout just silent-fire voice actors, like they did to Ryan Drummond, sonic voice (best one).

Bunch of lowlifes.

 

[Sk17]

It seems she got Hayter'd.

 

[CMDreamer]

So the story goes like this:

"Boycott a game because the employee offered me a lower payment than what I want for my job, and if I don't get what I want they're doing harm to the less fortunate people all around the world".

If she's doesn't agree with the payment, she's completely free to decide not to take the job, afaik no one forced her to take it accepting the -according to her- low payment.

The gaming industry -even if we don't like it-, moves around offer and demand of services and goods, if I'm not willing to do a job, nor take a specified payment for it, there are thousands of people that will, even for less.

The same goes when we buy a video game or a console, prices are set and we decide if we take or leave. It's kind of stupid to buy things when we already know they're overpriced just to whine afterwards about it.

 

[BraveDragonWolf]

She's fired.

 

[SG854]

Should Voice Actors get paid more then McDonalds employees?

 

[eyeliner]

I believe people here are becoming less intelligent.

Voice acting is not only the sessions she makes for the game. It's the trailers that will appear later, with dialogue that she won't re-record, as it will be spliced from past sessions.

It's the possibility of the game being released in future platforms, remastered/remade and using the same audio bites.

Damn, people, she knows how the industry rolls, and wants to be compensated while protecting the work done for the future.

This isn't something new, and the Bayonetta team should be smarter and make a different kind of contract, where she could have been more part of promos, adverts and be a state for the character, like some said, correctly as what happens with Michael Ironside.

I feel people in HR in artistic mediums are retarded. With social media, we know in a second who voices the characters and from their on, they become ingrained in our minds and are hard to dissossiate.

Very poor management, I'd say. It would be preferred they coming up and state that they wanted a new voice and move on, instead of asking the original voice to audit for the part she done previously multiple times.

I'll boycott the game. Like the two before.

 

[CompSciOrBust]

I believe people here are becoming less intelligent.

Voice acting is not only the sessions she makes for the game. It's the trailers that will appear later, with dialogue that she won't re-record, as it will be spliced from past sessions.

I'm not going to watch all her videos again but iirc she said she had to train for 7 months? That's a hell of a lot more work than the 4 hours of actual recording time people here are claiming. Also someone in the twitter replies did the maths and it works out to something like 70 copies of the game. The game will sell millions of copies but they can only afford to give her the money from 70 copies? I agree with Linuxares

 

[Rob Blou]

I work for a video game company and I had to cast, negociate, direct and record quite a lot of voice actors. Usually, the voice actors are not setting their prices based on the scale of the company/project, but they have a fixed hourly fee (plus other fees that you usually pay once per project). Quite similar to any other jobs that you hire people to do. Most video game voice actors (big or small) I worked with, charged between 200$ - 350$ USD per hour and they can record quite a lot of lines in one hour. Some people will charge per line, but it's not that common in the video game industry. I'm pretty sure that the 4k she's refering to is based on her usual hourly rate to record all of the lines she had in the game. Since the franchise got quite big and it's the 3rd game, she probably tried to charge more than she would charge anybody else and that's usually the issue. No mather if you're a big company or not, the audio team usually has a limited budget that is fixed in advance. That kind of situation happened to me a couple of times and I had to recast some characters that you guys probably know because it didn't fit in the budget that we had. Some actors asked for 10x what they usually ask while some way bigger actors in the same project asked for 250$ per hour. It's sad, but what's fair is arguable in that situation.