Baldur’s Gate 3 performer says developers don’t value voice actors as much as the audience does

The performer behind Baldur’s Gate 3’s Karlach, Samantha Béart, has lamented the “disconnect” that exists between how developers and the audience perceive them.

Speaking to GamesRadar at the Golden Joystick Awards, the performer said that she feels like game creators do not see voice actors as part of the team.

“There’s a weird disconnect between, maybe, developers’ attitude towards where we fit in the ecosystem – where we’re not actually part of the team – versus the players, who very much see us as the forefront,” she said.

Béart said that voice actors need to take the lead on promoting themselves as she feels like the studios involved are not going to do that for them. “I feel like we weaponize social media and algorithms to do that,” she said.

Baldur’s Gate 3 launched into Early Access back in 2020 before a 1.0 launch hit in 2023. The game sold 2.5 million units prior to full release and has gone on to sell over 15 million units. When it did launch into 1.0, it quickly hit 800,000 concurrent players on Steam.

Since its release, the game has won numerous prizes, including a Hugo Award. In June 2024, developer and publisher Larian Studios introduced mod support for the game; since then, over 100 million mods have been downloaded.

The value of voice actors remains a contested topic within the games industry. In July 2024, members of the US performers union, SAG-AFTRA, went on strike over the potential use of artificial intelligence in the space; actors wanted to have assurances that companies would not use their performances to train models that would ultimately replace them. The strike ended in July of the following year.

More recently, Swedish studio Embark has come under scrutiny over its use of AI to generate voice lines within the recently released and highly popular Arc Raiders, while developer Aspyr has also been in the spotlight for allegedly using AI to replicate voice acting in the remasters of Tomb Raider 4-to-6.