@zeik: I don't think Atlus has made any change in which actors they use, they simply hire a company to record the voices at non-uinon rates and it's between the casting director and the actors who wants to audition. And their games typically don't credit any voice actors, whether they're trying to hide their name or not.
But you may be right in that in that there are more of these actors doing non-union work who aren't trying to hide, and even confirm their roles on social media. But that seems more these actors joining SAG and going "financial core", which is an old legal precedent that enables a union member to become a "dues paying non-member" that can work on union productions without being bound by their rules. Some of these actors (who generally come from anime dubbing) have gone on to become very successful in video games, which leads to the interesting situation where a few of the voice acting super stars often mentioned in relation to this story are probably not proper SAG members. In theory they'd be free to work as much as they'd want even if the strike happens... But that would undoubtedly not go down well with their fellow actors.
I think most would rank voice acting below designers, programmers, artists, animators, writers and a ton of other groups in terms of impact on the quality of a game, and even further down if we're talking about driving sales. The amount of games where voice acting makes a difference are far and few between, and even in those games you'd be hard pressed to say that an actor's name or likeness actually factored into marketing or sales. Good voice acting matters, but it's not going to carry a work the same way a good movie actor could, and you can count the amount of truly in demand voice actors on your fingers. To make matters worse, SAG brings in their notions and baggage from TV/movie acting, where actors are front and center in the work and a driving force for demand, likely resulting in demands that are going to be completely out of whack for the industry. The end result seems like it's going to be a disaster.
This is a misnomer. The actors that drive demand in film and TV negotiate their own terms way above and beyond SAG minimums. Contract negotiations like these have no effect on them. It's the unknowns, the ones playing lesser guest roles and incidental characters that really benefit from things like residuals and better working conditions.
Honestly, I have to wonder if it would have any affect at all, as Atlus USA often uses mostly non-union actors. I believe it was one of the reasons P4's cast got gradually replaced, as several of the actors went union in the interim between P4's original release and Golden/Arena.
Just because the production is non-union, doesn't mean all the cast is. A number of union actors moonlight in non-union productions, either under fake names or by not being credited at all, because SAG hasn't been policing this all that closely. That changed during previous strike authorizations, and they started sending out letters to anyone suspected of doing non-union work, making it clear that scabbing would not be tolerated.
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