Jason Schreier's published a report on the situation. From what he's learned, the situation is more complicated than Taylor made it out to be. Edit: Schreier's added that he's seen written evidence Taylor was offered at least $15,000. Sounds like she's lying through her teeth then. I have no idea why she would - I believed her, she had nothing to gain and a lot to lose by coming out with those accusations. Maybe she's trying to gaslight Platinum into rehiring her? I duuno.
Still doesn’t sound like a lot though. Voice actors in other industries make much more yet for video games they’re still treated like they’re voicing games in the PS2 era. Both Platinum and Taylor could be in the wrong and that’s what it’s sounding like, she shouldn’t have gaslit and lied and Platinum shouldn’t have been so cheap. So I might not boycott this game… but I’m not buying it full price either. To hell with the lot of them, I’ll play it once it’s $20 or I can get it used. May no one directly involved with Bayonetta 3 receive my money
Yeah, now everything just seems sketchy, and I can only help but be confused on what Taylor's intentions were if she's being dishonest and doesn't even have any evidence to support her claim of only 4k total. I suppose there is more to this that will most likely come out soon, but its a very confusing situation now to say the least
it's 3-4 times union rate, to my knowledge, and seemingly enough to get Jennifer Hale? I'm never gonna apologize defaulting to being on the talent's side, but this really, really looks bad for Taylor, she at bare minimum blatantly lied about multiple things and lowkey sent heat Hale's way. However, 15k-20k for 5 sessions is definitely not slave labor. I still will always believe VAs should be paid more for their work, but Taylor really did just lie about what happened. It makes sense Kamiya responded the way he did. I'd be upset too if someone tried to libel me and call for my destruction. Jason Schreier flat out says he saw the offer she was sent and it was at least 15k. He doesn't run with this shit if he can get slapped in the mouth later. He may be an unlikable douchebag but I don't think he's ever had to roll this kinda thing back
The only way I can read this with her original claim is that the $4000 she was offered for the game would be for that one-session cameo. Entirely ignores the multiple-sessions main part.
Hmmm, wonder if this whole thing will serve as nice marketing for the game? Either way, I didn’t really care either way but stating the obvious lie of $450MM immediately triggered my BS detector. That’s a ludicrous amount to claim Bayonetta has earned. Btw, why are people claiming Kamiya’s response was bad? All I saw was his tweet saying something about people spreading untruths and then he blocked people tweeting at him. That was just classic Kamiya, no?
I just have 2 problems with this : - PlatinumGames went from “various overlapping circumstances" to "she lied about the offer" for their side of the story. OTOH, Helena Taylor is still sticking to her story and hasn't changed one bit of it so far. - So we have somekind of anonymous sources stating as such but providing no proof and suddenly that's more believable than Helena's explanation. To me, we're still in a "she said, he said" situation and I wouldn't jump automatically at the conclusion that Helena blatantly lied. Doesn't really make sense to break a NDA only to be willfuly slandering Platinum Games when the risk to be exposed would be way too high. Not to mention the consequences for her public reputation and carreer. Or she's crazy.
I don't see how "various overlapping circumstances" contradicts Schreier's report (which Video Games Chronicle has corroborated, fwiw): it presents the various circumstances why she didn't come back. Also, this information didn't come from Platinum and Schreier has seen written evidence Taylor was offered at least $15,000. I believed Taylor at first, I gave her the benefit of the doubt because I had no reason to believe she'd lie about something as serious as this. But the fact that there's documentation disputing what she claims and her response was "I don't want to talk about it anymore" speaks volumes.
I said it before, but Schreier stated that he himself saw the $15k offer and he wouldn't report on something like this if he had to roll it back. They probably can't just outright show the proof because that could get Bloomberg in legal trouble for sharing sensitive documents.
Yeaaa seems like Taylor really shit the bed here, idk what she was thinking this really backfired for her. I’m really disappointed in all of this… well except Hale oddly enough she seems decent enough in all this
Jennifer Hale most likely had no idea why Helena Taylor was replaced. People calling her a scab, etc are dumb and just like to assume the worst in people. My initial theory was that Platinum wanted Taylor out from the get-go, and intentionally low-balled her. But now with Jason Schreier's input (someone who doesn't just lie about something like that) I don't know what to think. There are no innocent parties in this situation thus far, except for maybe Hale. Regardless of the truth, this is ultimately going to do more harm than good for the fight for better treatment of VA's. Multiple other voice actors voiced their support for Taylor after her initial statement, and people are inevitably going to question those too, because "well Taylor lied, how do we know you're not lying?" I also saw people dig up Taylor's... questionable political and social beliefs, as if that somehow changes anything about the initial cause. If your support for her ended after finding out about these, then you never cared about the cause in the first place.
Is it really the case tho? From what we've seen Platinum offered her an actual decent amount of money for her work, she wanted more (6 figures+residuals LOL), they said no and fired her. Then she went on Twitter and started a smear campaign against the game, breaking NDA and literally lying about the amount of money she was offered, hoping Platinum wouldn't speak up because they were under their own NDA (prob Nintendo related). And she was right! Except someone else that WASN'T under NDA was able to chime in and reveal the truth to everyone, and now she doesn't want to talk about it anymore and wants to "put the whole bloody affair behind [her]". For someone that asked hundreds of thousands of people to boycott a game that's been worked on for years by a passionate team and was literally weeks away from release... she certainly lost her motivation rather quickly, didn't she? I don't see anything Platinum did wrong in this whole affair. 'xcept for Kamiya being a dick on twitter, but again, we've know about this for years so I don't know why people thought he was "blocking people to censor the truth", it's fucking Kamiya LMAO C'MON PEOPLE
Trading uniqueness for more professionalism is always a bad call. I already miss her (Hellena Taylor), but I think that there's a smidgeon of a chance that Jennifer Hale will be the better Bayonetta.
Of course people know what Kamiya's like, but building up a reputation as a raging manchild all that time isn't going to get anyone on your side if any sort of dispute arises, especially when your initial response is to sound like a Donald Trump tweet.
I know his twitter account is a meme at this point but yeah, I guess he shouldn't have tweeted anything regarding this matter. I can imagine higher ups at Platinum and Nintendo weren't exactly thrilled to see him throw oil in the fucking fire that was the twitter discourse regarding the game, but again, when I saw the tweet I just shrugged and figured it was Kamiya being Kamiya (and it turned out it was, what are the odds ) I will say I totally feel for Taylor's lies tho, I'm not trying to pretend I'm the smartest guy in the room or anything. It baffles me how she could think for a second this was a good idea, but since she has virtually no career as a VA I guess it was an "all or nothing" situation for her ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Seriously I don’t think “being a dick is just who he is” is a good answer. This is why I’m upset with both parties.
Ok so basically Helena Taylor was initially offered 10k, then 15k. She declined and was offered 4k for a cameo. She declined again. So she basically lied and is also a Blue-Lives-Matter-supporting-TERF. 0 need to boycott the game now.
Hellena Taylor's now confirming she was offered $15,000 and that her video was about the cameo offer. Also people have figured out how she got the $450 million number - she went on VGChartz (a noted bastion of reliability), added up all the Bayonetta sales numbers (including redundant ones), and multiplied them by 60 to get $450 million. [insert skull emoji here]
