“Pay your voice actors”: Fans criticize the new campaign to voice NPCs in Assassin’s Creed Shadows

Assassin’s Creed Shadow offered players a unique opportunity to give a voice to an NPC as part of a promotional event that started on Tuesday, but fans are not happy.

Assassin’s Creed ShadowDeveloper Ubisoft launched a marketing campaign called the Dubbing Challenge on TikTok, giving fans the once-in-a-lifetime chance to provide their voice to a secondary NPC to have it immortalized in the game forever. The prize also includes a fully sponsored trip to London with a professional singing coach and a recording session.

Assassin’s Creed Fans were quick to voice various issues with the competition on X (formerly Twitter), the biggest issue being that the company appears to be pursuing a tactic to avoid paying voice actors in the industry by “making fans work for their exposure” instead of properly compensating them for their contribution to the game.

“Pay your voice actors. We see you,” said one player on X, while others shared the same sentiment in follow-up replies. At the same time, others said they fear the gaming giant will “source voices for AI training” in the future without the person’s consent.

To participate, fans must upload their dubbing video to TikTok in their preferred language, featuring iconic Assassin’s Creed Dialogues from the cutscenes. The developers have clarified that the competition only takes into account the dubbing skills and that likes and comments are not a yardstick for judging the fans and selecting the winners.

With the increasing prevalence of AI in creating NPC dialogue and industry-wide layoffs in the gaming industry, it seems like a bad time for an event that promotes an unhealthy work environment for voice actors and takes away their work to promote a release.

Assassin’s Creed Shadow takes the series back to feudal Japan in the age of samurai and shinobi, with players returning to a smaller open-world map.