Synthra

@steely_pete That's fair. I remember saying in my original post that I didn't like her methods but I understand where she is coming from. I don't think a boycott is the answer, but disagreeing with her doesn't mean I don't still support her goal. Heck, I don't even like her personality, but still. It's a bad situation all around.

@Tober that's fair. I'm glad the series is still around. Although it is pretty pathetic that a company with that much money would make a budget that tight, not that I'm surprised.

@Switch_Pro honestly it feels like we're just hating on her at this point for having a better paying job, and I say this as someone who just left one of those jobs awful jobs. Like, I don't see how asking for better wages is asking for special treatment. I think we all should be but are too worried about losing what we have to try, which is understandable. And she herself said she's going through hard times and almost became homeless. I've been homeless. I feel that.

Also, isn't Amazon prime like $12 a month? A lot of people just like to watch their shows. What's wrong with that? I personally don't give them my money if I can help it, but having an Amazon prime subscription doesn't really say much. I'm confused.

@RiasGremory As someone else who has previously worked a similar job (looking for a new one ATM), I don't think it's fair to say that. I'm willing to bet that she probably has another job due to the gaps in her work. And besides, we're underpaid, too. I don't think it's fair to say that she doesn't work hard. We have no way of knowing. I have sympathy for any of us doing physical labor, but having watched my mom do a non physical job growing up I can honestly say it still takes a physical toll on you. And according to some of what she's said, she's not doing great financially either and has fallen on hard times like the rest of us. That's why she asked for the increase, which I think is fair. A lot of people have asked for their pay to be adjusted for inflation. Idk. Also, what was I making a big deal out of?

@wuntyme8 couldn't agree more.

@Switch_Pro from what I understand, she isn't an "otherwise no name voice actress". I don't know where I would find a copy of her resume, but from what I understand she has several other roles. They just aren't as well known. And to be fair, it being more money still doesn't make it enough money. Anyone working a low wage job who has ever had a raise or a bonus can attest to that. I went from a job that was making a minimum wage to $10 an hour once and I still couldn't afford my rent, so I'm not going to make any assumptions about her living conditions, not that I'm say you were.

@RiasGremory I don't think I'm able to link articles, but she is "one of us peasants." In a statement she released she said that she has been struggling to pay her cost of living, and that was part of why she asked for the pay increase. That is how gig work is a lot of the time. You might make a chunk of money and then nothing for a while. I don't know if she has a second job or anything, but that might not be cutting it, either. I have relatives who live in places where working two jobs on multiple incomes for one household isn't enough simply because the area is so overpriced and they can't afford to leave because they can't save any money, so I understand that on a personal level.

@Switch_Pro there are instances of actors and voice actors previously getting a cut of the gross pay. Project CD red supposedly did this with Cyber punk 2077 due to crunch. From what I heard they offer people willing to work the crunch time a percentage of the gross profit of the game. And, not to be disrespectful, but I'm not sure that math checks out. For $4000 to be 20% of the yearly pay for a game developer, they would have to be making $20000 usd a year. I checked and it said that the average pay in Japan even for an indie studio would be about $46000 USD per year. If that's the case then everyone working at Platinum should quit because they are certainly not being paid a living wage.

@Switch_Pro to be fair, I'm not sure that's a fair comparison. Even within certain industries, different roles carry different pay rates. That's like if I compared the money I made to the GM of my store when I worked in retail even though we worked very similar hours.

@Dr_Lugae counting The number of hours that someone has done the voice acting role instead of how many times they played the character is a interesting way to dictate how long they've been in the role, but I guess that's fair. But that is just for the first game. She also did the second game. I don't know how many hours that was though.

@Archeotech yeah, I guess that's all that can be said about it, especially the person that seems to think that I'm an absolute for feeling that way. I think everyone deserves to make a living wage, regardless of the kind of work they make. Voice actors do gig work. They might not have work for multiple months. If she doesn't have another source of income due to circumstances we don't know about, that 4k might only last her 2 months. I personally live in low income housing and 4k would be helpful to me and my family (disabled mother) but it wouldn't go very far. If she lives somewhere like the US or many places in England or Canada (which I think she does) then that's barely enough to cover rent for 2 months. I think a lot of people are so broke they don't realize just how little money $4,000 is these days. If you live in a developing country, it would be a lot more money. Ironically, she'd probably be better off taking the 4,000 and moving somewhere with a different conversion rate.

@Dr_Lugae she's been working on the games since the first one. How does she have the lowest amount of time on the series? Are you counting the third game?

@Arawn93 Oh, you mean the other side of the story they haven't told us yet? I went looking for a statement. They have yet to release one. Your making a lot of assumptions yourself for someone who thinks they know everything. Neither of us do. I informed myself to the best of my abilities, but there isn't a full story yet. If they release a statement, then I'll read it.

Also, if your going to keep calling me names, I politely request that you find a new insult. I've never seen someone with such an air of self importance in my life over how someone else feels about how a game company treated an employee. I responded to several of the other posts on here, and everyone was more respectful about it than you're being. And besides, I'm not even the only person who thinks her pay was too low. You've read the comments here. I said she had earned higher pay by now due to past work on THIS franchise, not ger previous work. They know she does good work and that's all that matters here.

When I hire people to do commission work, I pay them based off of their talent, not off of how many prices they done or how many galleries have their work in them. If I know they are going to do a good job, then that's enough. The only one sitting her and stating their opinion as a fact is you. I said I thought she deserved higher pay and that I probably wouldn't get the game because I was disappointed by how little they paid her and don't want to support that. I do this with any company that I know doesn't treat their employees right. If they have something to say, I will hear it and come to a conclusion. But I can't do that yet. You act like I've personally called you out by name or something. Chill. And also, here's a thought: not agreeing with someone take doesn't make them stupid. I'm not sitting here calling you an idiot, so maybe calm the hell down and stop acting like either of us knows everything.

If you want the game, go for it. I'm still on the fence about it. I need more info, but based off of what I've heard so far, I'm sad. All voice actors need to be paid better. That's definitely true.

@Arawn93 @Arawn93 The fact that voice actors are underpaid is a fact. We're not talking about "most of the world." That's irrelevant. We don't know what her living expenses are. We don't live her life. That most certainly isn't a living wage in many places. I don't care how prolific she is. I would have given her more just out of respect.

@Koda1000 They probably don't care and I couldn't agree more. He literally created my favorite franchise and I still can't stand him.

@Friendly Well at least someone does. Is this what Bayonetta/Nintendo fans are normally like. Damn, and I thought the FromSoft community sucked.

@Archeotech Don't waist your time. They aren't going to listen to you. So long as they can play the game they could care less.

@Arawn93 There are 700+ posts on here. I'm not going to read it his entire thread. And yes, I have played all of the other games, not that it should matter. I don't care how famous a voice actor is or how much work they did. I care that they are paid enough to feed themselves, and a lot of them are not. But I made a post about all of this already and have nothing else to say about it. God forbid someone want higher pay. They should just be grateful for the scraps they get and bend over and take it like the rest of us. That's worked out great for everyone so far.

Games generally do take months of hard work. Assuming that this one did as well doesn't make anyone ignorant. That's an understandable place to start. At the end of the day, I don't think her price was fair just going off of everything she's done up until now for this franchise. I would have paid her more just out of respect.

@Tober I know that 4K for the lead in your franchise is too little, that's for sure. Voice actors don't make enough to money, period. Not except the really popular ones. I would personally have offered her like 20-50% of what I pay one employee in a year. I think that would work. Hell, they could have offered her like 0.5% of the total profit in royalties and it would have been better than that. My respect for everything she's done for the franchise would have commanded a higher price at least, even if I had to do it in payments.

I love Bayonetta. It's one of my favorite games ever. But I care a lot more about people being paid a living wage for the work they do than I do a game, and that's all I have to say about it. If they can't do that then they couldn't afford to make this game in the first place. Reminds me of the meager pay that wait staff make. If you can only break even by making your employees fall into poverty, then your restaurant shouldn't be open.

That's all I have to say about this. I can't be bothered to keep responding to all of these comments. None of you have to agree with me and I don't have to agree with you. I just needed to get this off of my chest because I love this game and cant belive this happened. I can't convince any of you of anything, and I'm not going to try to. But I'm not going to sit here and defend inadequate pay, even if I don't know or even like the person involved (which I don't on either account. I didn't know who she was until all of this happened.) because that just isn't right. I'm not even saying that I agree with the boycott idea. But I do think that she's owed more money than this. It's just disrespectful. Almost as disrespectful as all the people saying she's just an entitled rich woman crying about not getting fired when she's the one who quit the role, isn't rich, and has a right to ask for higher pay and is doing this partially to stand in solidarity with other people in her community who are underpaid for their fantastic work.

But hey, the gaming community turns a blind eye to the mass mistreatment of the entire industry in regards to crunch, abusive work hours and environments and hours so that they can enjoy their favorite hobby all the time, so why should they start caring now, hu?

@steely_pete Okay then, that is good to know. But either way that's still very low considering the work she's done for them previously. I would have paid her more just out of respect alone smh.

@RiasGremory I certainly don't agree with her comments about the new voice actor. That's totally unnecessary and that's my biggest issue with this. That being said, I don't understand how you can act ungrateful by wanting higher pay for a roll that you did an excellent job with. I don't care how famous of a voice actor she is. Fame shouldn't overshadowed the talent she put into her roll. And Bayonetta's voice is a big reason that people like her. I imagine she probably didn't initially want to rock the boat, hince her original reply. But then she probably talked to Kamiya or thought about it and decided to make a statement. She probably didn't want to come back BECAUSE of the fact that she wasn't paid enough. I know I've quit jobs because it low pay before.

@Arizen I don't know where you got this 4 days idea from. Voice acting work takes quite a bit longer than that.

I had to make an account just to say this, but the number of people I see saying that $4000 is enough and she should be grateful or completely missing the point here. It takes months to do voice acting work. This is a very well known character, and she's did amazing work on her. This isn't an easy job. If voice acting work was that easy, everybody would do it. There's a lot of challenges and effort that go into something like this. Her work is absolutely worth more than $4,000 on a game that made millions of dollars. She's completely justified in her decision, and as much as I love this franchise and the other games that Platinum has made in the past, they knew that this was insulting when they said it.

I'm not sure how I feel about the game now. I was actually really excited about it, but this does genuinely leave a bad taste of my mouth. If I do still buy it I'm buying it used so the money isn't going to Platinum. She deserved better than this, and although I can't say I'm surprised that that's the attitude that Hideki Kamiya would take because, well, gimmick or not, he's kind of a jerk even if he is responsible for the creation of two of my favorite franchises. He knew he did her wrong, and so does the company.

She has nothing to be grateful for in this situation. It was probably a very hard and sad decision to make for her. We as the fans should appreciate the work she did to bring a character to life that we love, and we should be very disappointed in the company who did this to her. I don't understand the concept of defending a company who under pays people who work for them. You would think with how common that is and how scummy it is we would know better at this point.