It’s Witch Time All the Time Now

Bayonetta 3‘s promotional campaign has been an unprecedented roller coaster, largely due to content outside the game itself. Hellena Taylor, who voiced Bayonetta since the original game in 2009, did not reprise the role for this game, and made several videos explaining how PlatinumGames allegedly tried to lowball her. Except, all was not what it appeared to be per reporting from Bloomberg and VGC, as two authors saw evidence that she was offered a considerably higher amount than she let on. She was caught in a fib, as reported by two reliable sources. But with Taylor desiring to move on, it was full speed ahead to the game’s release with no further drama.

Ahhhh, no, not quite. Taylor was shockingly unwilling to let it go and move on with her “life in the theatre,” as she said in response to Bloomberg — itself a bizarre claim after saying that new voice actress Jennifer Hale has “no right to say she’s the voice of Bayonetta.” Moving on does not entail going on a nine-tweet thread about how you, actually, have been screwed more than five days after the Bloomberg and VGC articles were posted. I love me some messy and nonsensical drama, especially when it involves video games, so here we are yet again.

I’m also proceeding with this post because I’m not a fan of the lazy and misleading updates other press outlets have provided, which is not how journalists should amend big stories. Not to mention the outlets that never updated their now-inaccurate stories. There are also too many others in the press and gaming industry mentioning how messy and complicated this all is. It’s all a lengthy story, but “messy” and “complicated” this is not.

It has come to my attention that some people are calling me a liar and golddigger. I feel the need to defend myself and my reputation in the industry. See thread #PlatinumGames #Nintendo #Bayonetta #Bayonetta3 #Bayonutters #Boycott #NintendoEurope #NintendoAmerica #NintendoJapan

— Hellena Taylor (@hellenataylor) October 24, 2022

It was clear right from Taylor’s first tweet that this would be a doozy of a thread. I’m going to ignore her use of “gold-digger.” I won’t say that no one has called her this, but its usage does not apply here. But… what the hell is a “Bayonutter?” Do I even want to know? I’m scared to search.

As I posted on part three of my video thread. I explained that their first offer was too low. That offer was 10,000 dollars total. Remember, this is 450 million dollar franchise, (not counting merchandise.) I then wrote in Japanese to Hideki Kamiya, asking for what I was

— Hellena Taylor (@hellenataylor) October 24, 2022

Taylor’s plan here was to dispute the information in the stories that’ led to her being called a liar. So, it makes sense that her first tweets… confirm the information reported by Bloomberg and VGC as accurate. Taylor was first offered $10,000 to voice the titular character in the third game, an amount increased to $15,000 after mentioning to PG that she deserved better compensation. They later offered her the role of a cameo for $4,000, another fact mentioned by the articles. Upon rewatching the first video she posted, Taylor clearly stated that “the final offer to do the whole game, as a buyout, flat rate, was 4,000 U.S. dollars,” making this something beyond a mere lie by omission. It’s an outright malicious lie.

The claim that Bayonetta is a $450 million franchise is also absurd on its face. As former Fanbyte editor Imran Khan mentioned in his Patreon post, she likely concluded this by taking the individual sales numbers for Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2 from VGChartz and multiplying them by 60, rounding the number down a bit to account for inaccuracies. This is a bad way to do things for three reasons. (1) VGChartz uses estimates in lieu of real sales numbers, some of which may not be fully accurate. (2) But even if they were, this would assume every copy was sold for $60 or an equivalent, which they weren’t. (I purchased my PlayStation copy in 2010 for a mere $10, and recently purchased the physical Switch printing for $30.) (3) Publishers don’t receive the entire $60 for each copy sold. If the franchise was seriously worth $450 million, you can bet that Sega would have taken back control of it, and we’d be near the sixth installment by now.

There were not “extensive negotiations.” I’ve also been informed of ridiculous fictions, such as I asked for 250,000 dollars. I am a team player. I was just asking for a fair, living wage in line with the value that I bring to this game.

— Hellena Taylor (@hellenataylor) October 24, 2022

I’ve destroyed several brain cells after reading too many comments across message boards, article comment sections, and on social media about this story, but I never saw one person claim that she wanted $250,000 for the role. $100,000 is the guess I saw, the lowest six-figure ask a person could make. This is an attempt to throw out a hyperbolic number to make her other apparent demands seem reasonable by comparison. There’s a lot of projection here.

I will post the 14 charities, so that you can donate to charity, instead of buying this game from corrupt, greedy people.) There are people who are attempting to throw shade and discredit what I say. The industry is powerful, they have powerful journalists too.

— Hellena Taylor (@hellenataylor) October 24, 2022

To imply that the journalists are corrupt after confirming details of their stories requires an astounding level of cognitive dissonance and a commitment to dishonesty. It has also, humorously, been nearly two days since this tweet, and she’s yet to provide the list of 14 charities.

A startling aspect of this story is how the $10,000 and the later rate of $15,000 across five voice acting sessions isn’t high compensation to voice a returning protagonist. She could have led her story with this and still garnered sympathy, but that would have assumed her intent was to seriously highlight institutional pay issues voice actors face. Instead, rewatching Hellena Taylor’s videos now that more of the story has been revealed makes it clear that this was a petty, vindictive, and moronic scorched Earth intent to bury the Bayonetta franchise for her own selfish gain. I hope the backfire was worth it for her, but this will make it harder for the next voice actor who criticizes poor pay for video game industry voicework to be taken seriously. For all her talk about fighting against big corporations, she did them a huge favor here.

This is, in honesty, the kind of behavior expected from a person who, by several accounts, is a TERF and a Blue Lives Matter supporter. It is on brand for this kind of right-wing personality type to never admit wrongness or defeat by continuing to dig in instead of up. Bayonetta 3 is reviewing well, so perhaps we, including me on this blog, can put this whole thing behind us. But I also thought last week would be the end of it, and Taylor has now entered the Twitter mentions of Bloomberg piece author Jason Schreier’s account to argue semantics, so we’ll see.