I mean it's pretty fucked up no two ways about it. They offered a pittance and then made up some bullshit about why she wasn't returning to the role.

She is Bayonetta, really made that character, and should've been offered more.

This whole situation sucks. Going public is a big step, and I'm not boycotting the game, but she's got every right to be frustrated.

the more i think about, the less clear it becomes.

she IS Bayonetta, so you would hope a company would pay her a fair wage for her services. but simultaneously she doesn't own Bayonetta- so it's kinda fucked to take to social media. it's not like the company is going to be like, "you're right. we'll fire Jennifer Hale, and recast you." it really is going nuclear since every other company is probably watching and saying, "take a note- never cast her so we can avoid this in the future."

this all reads like a business relationship deteriorated and egos took the wheel. she should get paid- but if a company doesn't want to work with you, strong arming them via social pressure seems ill-advised for your long term career.

This is a weird situation. I feel she waited too long to make it known, and also find it odd she makes no mention of her salary prior to this. It was also not very classy to go after Jennifer Hale the way she did. However, 4K seems pretty low for a role like this and I wonder how things would have gone down if she announced it before they replaced her. Seems like most folks are in Hellena's corner. I'd love to know what Hale is getting since she's got quite a long and busy history and would certainly command a bigger cut. I checked out Hellen's IMDB page and the most recent gig was Bayonetta 2 back in 2014. I'll definitely agree that she should have been given a better deal since she has voiced her since the beginning, but she doesn't have much of a career to boast about which doesn't help her case.

Considering that Hale is a household name, it seems only logical she would get much more than 4k so it sorta begs the question if there was another reason we don't know about, like maybe Hellena was difficult to work with or something and they wanted to get rid of her. If it was just about money you wouldn't go and hire someone who would absolutely cost more. Or maybe its as petty as they looked at her history and figured they could lowball her to save some coin and when that wasn't gonna work out they canned her instead and picked someone they could put a familiar face to if they were gonna have to pay more. Which seems dumb and unnecessary to me when the franchise already had a good VA and Bayonetta isn't some gangbuster of a franchise. Clearly, adding Hale went unnoticed by most people and no one seems to think better of the game since she was announced.

Ok, getting a little long here. I'm really just surprised Hellena would wait till now to say anything and I don't think the way she went about it is going to do her any favors. But I definitely believe she got stiffed. I don't think we have all the info though and probably never will. And Kamiya seems like a bit of a dick from what I've read since this started. But that seems to be a theme, apparently, or so I've read in the midst of all this, I don't use Twitter. Anyway, that went on longer than I meant it to so lets call it here. Hope Hellena gets something favorable out of this experience.

@spacemanspiff00: The game is out in like two weeks, if she had come out with this news earlier then nobody would remember or even know about it by the time game is actually out. Waiting means that at the very least the release of the game has a shadow over it. It's still not going to matter but it's really your only shot.

More power to her.

@efesell: I was more suggesting that maybe there was a chance she could have used fan support to get a better deal. Though I don't know if she would have been breaching some contract by doing so at that time. I have only read about it and I didn't see mention of how long ago this took place either. I'm just not certain if it will help her cause at this point, or hurt it. But, yes indeed, more power to her.

At least from the info that's available to us, $4000 is definitely laughably low to offer for that sort of work.

I'll boycott Bayonetta 3, but since I wasn't planning on buying it anyway, I don't think that exactly counts.

With her good voice acting, she helped made Bayonetta an iconic character, right up there with other popular character action protagonist. Regardless of what was happening behind the scenes in terms of her personality, just offering her 4K is an insult at this point. But at the same time, I agree that this call for a boycott is a waste of time, because too many fans have been waiting for years for this game and can't wait to play it. Also, in the real world, people in the industry who speak out or blow the whistle, often get blacklisted, while the industry in question gets away with their dirty practice, or at the very least recover from the fallout. This is especially true for women and people of color.

The only thing Taylor can hope for is that the game itself is a huge disappointment, I mean Devil May Cry 2 disappointing, which results in the game not selling well overall. Jennifer Hale is a voice actor elite at this point in her career, so you know she got way more money.

This is certainly not the kind of news that I'd want to hear about Bayo 3. That's a pretty significant stain on what will most likely be a great game.

...But, as much as I can see the reasoning for people not wanting to play the game, I'm still going to play Bayo 3 eventually. This just isn't on the level of Activision Blizzard.

I thought voice actors were paid on a set scale or roughly per words, was Bayonetta any different? Its sort of hard to judge without knowing any context, how much voice work does Bayonetta 3 have? and was the pay any different to the previous game?

Huh... First I've heard of this. I haven't been paying super close attention to Bayonetta 3, but I guess this would explain why she sounded noticeably weird to me in the reveal trailer.

Voice actors seem like they get the short end of the stick constantly. Unless you're one of the three that gets cast in every leading role ever, most people playing games probably don't even know your name. I don't know if this is just a case of them thinking getting a bigger name would sell to more people, but Hellena Taylor did a fantastic job, and deserves to be paid for it.

As someone who's a big fan of the first game, less into the second game, and has been feeling kind of passive for the third game pre-release hype until now, it would make me less likely to buy this game if the company just cheaped out on its star. I've got three or four different versions of the first game at this point. I'll gladly just play that instead. I mean, how do you even top driving a motorcycle on missiles, into space, to go punch god into the sun anyway?

When it comes to pay my opinion is pretty skewed because i don't earn a lot of money, my impression is at those rates she'd have to do 7/8 projects a year to "live well" but for voicing the main character i feel like it should be more, voice actors should also be paid more anyway because work isn't guaranteed and health can prevent you from working, so yeah it should be more.

The weird part is they got Jennifer Hale, pretty much the most famous female voice actress ever, isn't she more expensive? Or has she been accepting low offers her whole career?

I don't really need to boycott Bayonetta 3 because Switch's are too expensive so i still haven't played Bayonetta 2, but also 3 is looking... fine, the first game was amazing and the budget and intense production values in the 2nd game are incredible (from what i've seen and heard), but i feel like Platinum are falling behind a bit in recent times, Automata was amazing but mostly for reasons other than the gameplay, and while they're probably going to copy paste Bayonetta's gameplay successfully the rest of it judging from the trailers looks a bit iffy.

Edit: After another day of reading opinions and watching this slowly unravel i've changed my mind about the pay in this case, if Bayo 3 only requires around 16 hours for the $4,000 that's very good.

I agree with others saying that if it was just an issue of money, it doesn't make sense for their next choice to be one of the most famous voice actors in the world. Like if it was a movie they would've said "Fine, we'll just get Tom Cruise."

@eccentrix: Often times, the thinking is that a bigger name attached to something leads to more sales. So even if they are paying more for Hale, they could be planning on it making more money than if they just got Taylor to do it for less.

Ultimately, it's a role that she didn't create (as in the IP itself) reading words she didn't write about stories she isn't telling.

Like David Hayter and Metal Gear Solid, it seems like the change wasn't handled in an amicable way for the lesser party, and perhaps even more importantly doesn't seem to have that tangible of an effect on the end product. Because of its superfluousness, it's easy to take Taylor's side here, but I think it's silly that anyone's in the business of taking sides in the first place.

It sucks she didn't get the job, but different actors play different roles all the time. Terrence Howard magically transformed into Don Cheadle between Iron Man movies. All sorts of people have been in the Darth Vader and Michael Myers suits. Katie Holmes became Maggie Gylenhaal. Yes, I cheated and Googled this, but The Mountain from Game of Thrones was 3 actors across 8 seasons.

I get why she's angry about how this played out, especially because she was replaced by a woman who either clearly charges more per hour than she does to begin with or can afford to charge less for a quicky action role with limited dialogue. But outside of her camp and the publishers, I'm not sure why I should care. Then again, I've never played a Bayonetta to begin with, so I don't have the attachment necessary to get me all riled up in the first place.

@brian_: I get that logic for movies, but does it really apply to video games, outside of big-name movie stars acting in games with their own likeness? Are they marketing this as "Bayonetta 3, starring Jennifer Hale"? (This trailer posted three days ago doesn't mention her once.) I can imagine only the biggest Hale stans buying this game just because she's in it.

Oh, Jennifer Hale's doing it? I'm sure she'll do a grand job but my head is now meshing Bayonetta with Commander Shepherd's voice.

And it sounds weird enough to want it.

@shindig: Or Bastila.

@nodima: I think that one should care even if they're not a fan of Bayonetta specifically because this is a clear example of a company trying to blatantly exploit talent and pass it off as "scheduling conflicts" or whatever they called it specifically.

@nodima: Huh, she didn't write the story or the words but come on, she brings them to life. That goes for any actor. You mention David Hayter and that's the same deal, he gave the character life and seeing Keifer come in instead... that felt like replacing the soul of the character with a hired gun. And the performance became a distraction.

I'm kinda bummed about Jennifer Hale coming on because there are other talents out there, but the VO industry seems to prefer sticking to known names. Hell, she doesn't even have a natural British accent. Taylor was a case of giving someone lesser known a shot and she killed it.

@shindig: If you watched the trailer you'll see that she's doing a very good Bayonetta impression, which begs the question why they wouldn't just pay for the original voice since they're not changing anything about the character.

For the sake of playing devil's advocate i want to suggest the idea that maybe when Taylor requested more she requested a lot more, her reaction to not getting the job is to ask fans to boycott the game, she doesn't get anything from that it's revenge but she's also a member of a community of underpaid actors, so it could also be a move to try and get better pay for voice actors.

There's been no official response though Hideki Kamiya tweeted that she's being "untruthful" but that was all he's allowed to say at the moment.

I have to agree, the impact of a good voice actor is very important, especially if they help make a character popular. It's like a good bass player in a band. They often aren't as popular as the lead singer, lead guitarist, or even the drummer. But without the bass, the rest of the music sounds out of place. And don't reply by mentioning guys like Flea from ROCP. He is a rare exception, not the rule. In terms of video games, Michael Ironside not voicing Sam Fisher in the last two Splinter Cell games is this. The guy that replaced him did an okay job, but it simply wasn't the same. Imagine Darth Vader being voiced by anyone else other than James Earl Jones. They literally paid the man a lot of money so they can keep using his voice electronically after he retired it just a couple of weeks ago.

@cikame: I would say that what she's doing right now only stands to hurt her professionally if it's all true. Doing this on what would be a very flimsy lie is something I find pretty hard to consider.

@nodima: I think you're really downplaying how important good and consistent voice acting can be to getting an audience to relate to a character and feel an attachment to them. A great voice actor that embodies a role can really pull in an audience, elevate the material, and is often not so easily replaceable. Sure, when it's only a voice and not a person in front of a camera, it can be a bit easier to swap them out, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be discouraged.

There are certainly some situations where changing voice actors is just unavoidable, but if it's purely to cut corners on the budget of an entry in a big popular franchise, it's hard to really take the studio's side.

Also, while contracts and compensation differ from one situation to the next, it's hard to ignore that voice actors in general tend to not be compensated very well. A lot of studios are also openly hostile towards unions and will go out of their way to make sure they only hire non-union voice actors. It's very hard to not view these studio's as the bad guys here, just mercilessly taking advantage of voice actors while otherwise generative massive revenue.

Bottom line, it's her call in terms of what's justified.

That aside, there's plenty of info out there talking about how underpaid voice acting is and how people haven't always dealt with the hazard aspect of the job (i.e. schedule multiple sessions where your actor screams constantly is bad for their vocal cords).

I'll be honest, I'm not sure what is reasonable for a game like Bayonetta 3. It's not just the amount of lines, but she is the star of all three games spanning decades. That voice is 100% tied to that character. While I'm not sure what's fair--whether that is what's the going rate for that type of work or how much voice actors should be paid for that type of work--$4,000 sounds very low.

@eccentrix: I don't think it directly applies, or is on the same scale, as it is with movie stars, but I also don't have a lot of faith in the decisions made by management to think this is a carefully thought-out marketing plan. More of a "She wants more money? Screw it. If we're going to spend more money either way, let's just get someone with a bigger name."

@brian_: That logic makes more sense to me, that they are willing to pay more, just not to her.

David Hayter has now responded to the situation and has given a few points of references on why an offer of $4,000 is well below the minimum rate.

The thing is according to her they made an offer, she said no probably with a counter offer, they then made the apparently bigger offer of 4k. So even is she requested a laughably large sum of money to do this role, and then they walked away, there is no logical reason for the company to even start from the small amount they did offer. They would have started with a reasonable rate based on the industry standard. Unless there goal was to get someone for super cheap, you offer them a reasonable amount to begin with. And if they just didn't want to work with her again, don't even make the insulting offer.

They don't have to give her the job, so asking everyone to boycott might be over the line. But if this is a way to try and get voice actors a little more attention and change things for the better then fine. But if Bayonetta sells well its only doing more harm then good for voice actors. Maybe just a "hey this is why in not the voice of this game, do with that information what you will fans." would have probably been a more diplomatic way to go about it, but probably wouldn't raise the awareness you might want.

Unless there was a contract that stated that she would receive the next role then the company has no obligation to rehire her. The $4,000 number is a clear statement that they don't want her. Sounds like she simply lost a job and is trying anything to keep it.

@chaser324: I agree with all of this, I simply don’t think it’s something for the general public to get up in arms about as recasting roles is nothing new to the world of acting, voice or otherwise. I didn’t say anything about the quality of the product itself.

For what it’s worth, I absolutely hate the new Spider-Man face in the Sony games even though it objectively looks fine. But Insomniac had their reasons and did what they did, and I’ll live with it.

I'd say being pissed off and certainly putting your frustrations out there so people, and other actors, are aware of them is entirely justified, but a full-on boycott? Noooooooo.

This is an industry that still regularly abuses workers AND actors and suffers, at worst, a PR backlash lasting ~2 weeks (go read ZombiePie's excellent writeup about CDProjekt for more!), so being lowballed for a gig doesn't really blip for me.

Honestly, getting organized about it can be the best thing: just look what happened when there were rumblings that John DiMaggio wasn't going to come back to voice Bender. That's a different situation, as DiMaggio is also beloved across the industry for more than his performances, but sometimes getting your peers behind you is a lot easier and more effective than trying to rally consumers.

@nodima: But I don't think very many people are mad about this because it's a recasting.

If Platinum had simply ghosted her and just hired somebody else without calling her up that would be unusual and disappointing, since she has more or less made the character for its entire existence, but wouldn't have merited the indignation that I think is far more appropriate here.

i'm still of multiple minds about this thing- but i guess my next question would be, what exactly was Hellena's purpose in taking this public (aside from arguably righteous social media bloodletting)? embarrassing Platinum leadership (fair enough), but then what?

it absolutely sucks that Platinum doesn't value their IP or talent enough to spend the money to provide a cohesive work for fans- but since that die is cast, i'm not sure what Hellena expects a twitter mob to do about it (aside from gain social media points). it feels like the likelihood of her being blackballed by corporate entities is greater than the chance of success at getting Platinum to recant.

and especially in the VA field, where it feels like a total of 20 people comprise the workforce- "don't shit where you eat" feels somewhat appropriate. if i'm a casting director for FUTURE GAME and i google 'Hellena Taylor' after getting her reel i'm going to get headlines that read 'Voice Actor Calls for Boycott.' for risk-adverse companies, that feels like an immediate more trouble than it's worth.

(again- so it doesn't get twisted- Hellena absolutely deserves to get hers- but if her employer has opted out of the relationship, i'm not sure there's much to be done unless you believe casting decisions ultimately are the purview of fans).

i'm not sure if there's an international Voice Actors Guild, but this seems like the sort of job for a group like that, so they can do some blackballing of their own. collective bargaining really feels like the only way to win here- so don't cross your picket lines, kids.

@mellotronrules: If I'm to speculate wildly I would say that she doesn't seem to take on very many roles and probably isn't overly concerned about the professional hit here so it purely just seems to be "hey this is bullshit and here is it happening with a really popular franchise" and hey maybe a little bit of venting because why not.

As an aside, Hideki Kamiya has achieved his Perfect Form and decided that the only way to truly Block everyone is to deactivate his Twitter.

yeah that's true, and if this is her equivalent of 'you can't fire me i QUIT!' with double birds out the door, i'm all for it.

i think where it starts to feel a tinge egotistical to me is when someone calls for a boycott vs. simply saying someone is a shit employer. i know she probably doesn't believe this, but when you say, 'don't buy this product because i was offered an insulting rate by leadership' in some ways you're saying your labor is the keystone of the product- and while some fans might agree- that kinda maintains the all-too-common distortion field of 'the visible faces of this product ARE the product, behind-the-scenes folks be damned.'

but that's a different conversation about power/income disparity in games dev :)

She should have been offered more money and more respect for having established and grounded a character so completely purely through her talent. Being offered a bit role and a shit payout as a consolation parting gift as the studio hires a more expensive new VO to take over your spot certainly doesn't feel great. For her to break NDA and go public with this in such an aggressive way only goes to show how frustrated she must have felt. This is nothing like the David Hayer MGSV situation where they simply didn't contact him at all.

Boycotting the game is a whole different conversation but I think we have all seen how boycotts typically work out in the world of gaming. Sure people want to support VO actors and are very up in arms about this whole situation but.. they also want to play that hot new 10/10 Bayonetta 3 too. Pretty sure not much is going to come from that. Not that the IP has ever been much of a financial hit regardless. Bayonetta is a critical darling and a character action fan favorite, but sadly has never done huge numbers. This latest drama is certainly not helping either, but who knows maybe if it makes it into enough news cycles it will bring the awareness and curiosity to more folks out there.

Where's the option for "No, she should've been offered more money." ie the situation sucks but not enough to warrant a boycott. There are much better reasons to boycott games, such as the working conditions in their production lines.

Her story doesn't really pass the sniff test. I'd get it if they wanted Scarlett Johannson to replace her, but to go out and get a more expensive voice actor who couldn't possibly do a better job and has no impact on sales doesn't make a lick of sense unless there are other major factors that aren't being brought up.

It's also kinda shitty for Hale to take the job since she's not hurting for work at all.

It's hard to say whether $4,000 is below the minimum rate without knowing the exact time commitment involved in the role. I've never played a Bayonetta game, so I don't have a sense of just how much voice acting there is, but I suppose there's the possibility that 4 x 4 = 16 hours would be enough to get what the game needs. For a slightly different perspective, there was a comment over on Kotaku's story about this from William Salyers, who ended up replacing the original Mordin voice actor in Mass Effect. I've copied over the most relevant bits here:

Jennifer Hale is one of THE premiere voice actors in the business, so it isn’t like they hired a hack to save money. I don’t know the game, or this particular character, but in my experience, $4,000 is a good offer for a couple of sessions, which is all most games require. It would be considered over-scale by union standards, and I’d be pleased to get it. I’m not sure what Ms. Taylor means when she refers to a “living wage.” We’re contractors, so we’re paid per session. That’s NEVER enough money to live off of one gig for any length of time. The presumption is that actors like us will be doing multiple sessions per month for different projects, which CAN add up to a living wage. That doesn’t always happen, of course, but that risk comes with the territory. Most actors know and accept it. Working actors (not stars) are like professional gamblers: we hope to win enough games at enough casinos to piece together a living. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t. That’s just how it works.

@therealturk: “Take your crumbs and be thankful for them” I guess.

That’s probably nice to hear from a colleague.

I think it's more difficult than a yes or no. I feel it's a bit weird for your average fan to have an opinion on this when most of us don't even know what a good rate for voice actor in this role would be. Like, if it were $4K for a months work, and you'd be unable to attend to other work during that month, then that rate is far too low. If that's the going rate across the industry, than a boycott of one game feels like hating the player and not the game. If it were simply the rate Nintendo/Platinum were offering, but it were below the average rate, then the boycott feels justified.

I feel for her because I would imagine she feels powerless at the moment. I guess that's why she would reach out to fans in this way. But I also feel a bit weird when fans get too involved in the business end of games. In theory it's not a bad idea. I personally find the business interesting. But we've seen time and again that the average fan is incapable of acting in good faith and with a modicum of intelligence when given that type of access.

Man, I can see this from so many different angles, but it ultimately sounds like Taylor has fallen on hard times and really needed/wanted more than 4,000 bucks and feels that she is entitled to more money because the game will, theoretically, make millions and millions of dollars. Does she deserve more than a programmer, background artist, or composer? Everyone's going to have to answer that for themselves, but I'd lean towards "no." Bayo's voice actress just isn't that important to me. You could get any middle aged woman with a British accent and she will do just fine, I'm sure.

It sucks that that happened to her, but it also sucks for Platinum if what they offered is the going rate for the job, and it sucks for Hale, who I've always loved, to get roped into it just for taking a job offer.

I have a couple different conflicting opinions on this.

She should have left it with her first video. She made her point there. Each successive video made her come off more self centered, and knocking Jennifer Hale was uncalled for. However, Hellena Taylor has every right to be mad, and has a lot of pent up frustration to vent. People seem to think this was a calculated thing based on the timing, but really it was a direct response to the very recent comment from Platinum. They said she was replaced due to a "confluence of events", when really it seems they just didn't think she was worth much.

I don't get. She was perfect for the role, I don't know why they felt the need to replace her with someone more expensive, and really not make much effort to capitalize on the bigger name. Based on trailers, it seems they told Jennifer Hale to do her best Hellena Taylor impression. What was the point of this? I'd like a little more insight into the "confluence of events", but doubt we're going to hear much beyond that.

I'm not boycotting this game, but I won't be playing it any time soon. Every cutscene will make me thing of Hellena and sour the experience. Maybe in the future I won't feel that way, but that's where I am right now.

The most depressing thing here, is the revelation Hellena Taylor is just scraping by. The fact someone that good, with such a great role under her belt, still couldn't get any work of note once she turned 40 just hurts my head. She's got one of the most beautiful British accents out there. I would listen to her read the technical manual for a vacuum cleaner.

So, even though I think she went a bit too far with some of her comments, I can't get mad. Bayonetta was her biggest role, the one that should have made her a star. But it didn't. So as job offers dried up in her 40's, she probably though she would at least have that. The announcement of Bayonetta 3 would have been exciting. The character was in Smash Bros now, the Switch was flying off shelves, the rerelease of the first two games were selling better than to original ones. She would have been thinking she was on her way to the biggest paycheck of her life. Then they low balled her, and told the public it was a "confluence of events". Yeah, I'd be pissed too.

While I think 4 grand is quite pathetic compared to what movie stars make it isnt bad by any other metric, it's just that movie stars are grossly overpaid. Chris Pratt is probably going to make millions on the Mario movie for what seems like far less work. (and a questionable performance)

Ultimately the thing that bothers me about this the most is when she said that Jennifer Hale has no right to call herself Bayonetta. Which is garbage. Actors don't own the characters they portray. She didn't design Bayonetta or animate her, write her dialog etc. I think it's cool that's shes as attached as she is and Platinum lying about the situation sucks but yeah you lost my sympathy after that comment.

@boozak: $4K isn't bad if the work were to last like 1-2 weeks. Or a month, but she was able to work other jobs at the same time. I'm not up to date on all this. Has she mentioned what sort of obligation to the job was expected of her, time commitment wise?