The Importance of Professional Ethics for Voice Actors

It’s been a while since I last wrote about any sort of voice actor issues coming from a Mihoyo game. The last time was during the wildcat strike that caused many voice actors to attack a fellow voice actor for checks notes taking a position after a previous voice actor decided to not work for several months during an unofficial strike. You can read more about it here and here.

Those who had quit and were fired after all of the backlash from that…well clusterfuck have been replaced.

Though recently, Corey Landis, the VA behind Welt Yang for Honkai Star Rail has recently been released from his role.

The reason seems to be that he was in a dispute between the recording studio being Lionbridge Games in terms of negotiating a contract. Through his whole time working on Honkai Star Rai he was working without a contract.’

Though really on the deeper side of things there was a contract dispute lawsuit that was really going on that was recently dismissed. Hoyoverse decided to end the agreement as there wasn’t a contract.

Now usually when there’s a dispute between a voice actor and a studio, Hoyoverse has gotten involved on behalf of the voice actor. Like when Formosa wasn’t paying several of their voice actors, Hoyoverse did get involved and had the studio switch to Sound Cadence.

However, it seems that Corey Landis tried to show emails between him and a Hoyoverse employee and doxxed him. Now people seem to think that doing so is all fine and dandy and that there aren’t any repercussions because they work for a big corporation.

As someone who has worked at a big corporation as a low level employee, having people post anything related to what I look like to my name always scared the living shit out of me. We live in a society (at least in the US) where people will use a gun to take care of a disagreement. After the local Walmart had a shooting because someone wanted someone else’s parking sport and the last couple shootings happening in malls, and other retail stores (one of which I frequented in Allen, TX growing up there.) I was afraid of someone using my name or face to carry out some plot or being discovered by family members. (Because I was estranged from half of them.)

Just because someone works for a corporation doesn’t make them a person. They have a life and have families. Giving out their personal information especially a business email without their permission is doxxing. I don’t care what anyone says and it’s especially fucked up to do so.

When you go out to work in the professional world, there is this thing called ethics. And one of those things is that you don’t give out or show people their personal information. I don’t care if there’s a dispute between you or them. That’s not for the public to see first of all and second of all, fans of Mihoyo games have this history of checks notes harassing people.

Which we saw when Jacob Takanashi became the new VA for a Genshin character and was instantly harassed by fellow VAs and by fans. Mihoyo fans do not have a good track record at all. Though Corey Landis deleted the tweets however that does not exempt him from the fact that he tried to have someone doxxed.

I know people are trying to get him re-hired but I’m sorry if you partake in trying to rile the fanbase to do another harassment campaign then you shouldn’t be allowed to have your old position back, at least until you understand the meaning of ethics.

It seems like when this happens, it always baffles me on how there aren’t any VA’s with any lick of sense or any sort of morals or ethics. Well except for Megan Shipman but she’s the only one. Maybe one day people will learn from this. But I don’t see that very likely.

What do you think? Do you think that VA’s should take a class in ethics before they sign onto a project? Why or why not? Let me know in the comments below. Like this post? Don’t forget to share it with your friends. Want to keep up with the latest? Hit the subscribe button. Want to support the blog? Check out my tip jar!

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