Why Aren’t Video Game Actors Treated Like Stars?

The voice actors behind billion-dollar games are paid hourly rates, and have seen video game voice acting budgets eaten up by Hollywood stars:

“‘With very few exceptions, allocating a major portion of a budget to a big name is a magnificently terrible waste of money,’ Blum says. ‘A name on a game is something executives use to impress each other, and I find it difficult to believe that those huge dollars can ever be recouped or even justified.

“‘I recently walked off a game because they expected me to record over 20 vocally stressful characters in one session for scale because they had blown their budget on a few “A-listers.”‘”