Some major video game publishers might have trouble finding top talent to voice their game characters starting Friday, October 21. That's when SAG-AFTRA—an actor's union boasting 150,000 active members across film, TV, radio, and games—is set to begin a strike targeting some of the biggest companies in the game industry.

The strike threat comes more than a year after SAG-AFTRA first publicly discussed a proposed strike, following the 2014 expiration of a contract with publishers including EA Games, Activision, Disney, Take Two, Insomniac, and Warner Bros. The union is seeking royalty payments for actors in games that sell at least two million copies, as well as stunt pay for "vocally stressful" recording sessions, among other demands.

If those demands aren't met, union members will be barred from all voice, motion-capture, and background work on games with 11 affected companies in total. The potential strike action was overwhelmingly approved last year by more than 96 percent of voting union members.

"The videogame employers we are striking continue to operate under the terms of an agreement structured more than twenty years ago for an Industry that was only beginning to utilize professional performances," the union writes in its official strike notice. "Since then, games have evolved to provide increasingly immersive and cinematic experiences that compete with television and theatrical motion pictures for consumer dollars. It is time for this now mature industry to pay and treat professional performers according to the standards and precedents that our union has established and defended for generations."

In response to the strike threat, the targeted gaming companies issued a joint response saying they were "deeply disappointed" by the news, but also ready to weather any strike.

"We consider the Union’s threatened labor action to call a strike precipitous, unnecessary and an action that will only harm their membership," the statement reads, in part. "SAG-AFTRA represents performers in less than 25 percent of the video games on the market. Any strike would not only deny SAG-AFTRA’s membership work, but this would also give their competitors, who do not engage union talent, a leg up while any strike would be in place." The responding companies also note that gaming voice actors already make in excess of $100 an hour and that only one injury related to vocal stress has been reported during the previous contract.

While game companies would still be able to find non-union voice actors to work on their games in the event of a strike, some of the highest-profile actors in the business would be unavailable during any work stoppage. Last year's strike threat received public support from actors ranging from David Hayter and Jennifer Hale to Phil Lamarr and Wil Wheaton. Any strike would likely not affect games set to be released this holiday season, in any case, and the affected publishers say they "anticipate minimal impact on current and near-future game releases."

Both SAG-AFTRA and game industry representatives are heading back to the bargaining table this week in a last-minute effort to come to some sort of agreement. But, as the union puts it in their news release, "based on past experience, we are not confident management is willing to make the changes necessary to bring this contract up to the standards of our other agreements."