It was déjà vu in Burbank on Thursday as hundreds of striking video game actors carried picket signs and marched outside the Warner Bros. studio lot roughly a year after their film and TV colleagues did the same.

The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists held its first picket this week since calling a strike on behalf of some 2,600 performers doing voice acting and motion-capture work in the video game industry.

The walkout began Friday after negotiations between the union and the video game companies broke down over concerns about artificial intelligence.

The companies “come to us to ask how heroes sound and what they look like and what they do, and we’re gonna show them,” Sarah Elmaleh, chair of the union’s negotiating committee, said at the demonstration.

In a statement provided last week to The Times, video game company spokesperson Audrey Cooling said, “We are disappointed the union has chosen to walk away when we are so close to a deal, and we remain prepared to resume negotiations.”

SAG-AFTRA has been bargaining with the video game companies for a new agreement covering interactive media since the contract expired in 2022. Game actors have demanded AI regulations, wage increases to keep up with inflation, more rest time and medical attention for hazardous jobs.

Nearly two years later, the remaining issue at the heart of the strike is AI.

The performers are seeking a deal that will require video game producers to notify them when planning to replicate their voices, movements or likenesses with AI, inform them about how their work will be used, obtain their consent before moving forward and compensate them accordingly.

“As long as AI is used as a tool and not a replacement, that’s fine,” said Chris Jai Alex, a striking video game actor known for portraying Tusk in “Killer Instinct” and Strife in “Darksiders Genesis.”

“I’m all about being efficient, but … the human element is irreplaceable.”

LeQuan Bennett, a striking video game actor known for voicing Captain Trent in “Return to Monkey Island,” said he believes that a performer’s likeness, movements and voice should be regarded as their intellectual property in business negotiations with video game producers.

“Being technically minded, I understand that there’s no stopping AI,” Bennett added. “We are fighting to put guardrails that protect our rights.”

Video game actors argue that they are especially vulnerable to AI because of the invisible nature of voice acting and motion-capture work. They worry that if a company uses AI to replicate their voices or movements without permission or compensation, they will have a hard time proving it.

“Studios and [developers are] trying to make the argument that if it’s recognizable as you and your natural speaking voice, then we can talk about protections,” said Alejandra Reynoso, an actor known for voicing characters in “Dota 2” and “Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin.”

“But I think we all know that you love what video game performers and actors do because they can become so many characters.”

A major concern for actor Seth Allyn Austin — who has worked on “The Last of Us Part II,” “Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order” and Insomniac’s “Spider-Man” series — is being sufficiently informed about how his performances will be used. He and other performers want to make sure game developers’ plans align with their values before giving them permission to replicate performers’ work.

“This is one of the first strikes where I’ve seen movements, stunts, voice and actors all really come together as one,” Austin said. “We’re all taking up different burdens on the same fight.”

Actor Zachary Luna marches outside the Warner Bros. studio lot in Burbank.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

AI was also a key sticking point during the film and TV actors’ strike, which ended with contract terms requiring studios to obtain performers’ consent and compensate them when replicating their work with AI. Some actors were critical of that agreement, arguing that the AI protections weren’t strong enough.

“We’ve been continuing to evolve our AI provisions since the … strike last year,” said Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA national executive director and chief negotiator. “There will always be SAG-AFTRA members who want there to be no AI. I get it. I understand it. I even sympathize with it. That’s not a reality that we can create.”

The county of Los Angeles has tentatively agreed to buy the Gas Company Tower, a prominent office skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles, for $215 million in a foreclosure sale.

The price is a deep discount from its appraised value of $632 million in 2020, underscoring how much downtown office values have fallen in recent years.

The Board of Supervisors must still approve the deal, which county real estate officials quietly but aggressively negotiated. If completed, the purchase could move workers and public services out of existing county offices, including the well-known Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, which dates to 1960, according to multiple people familiar with the transaction who requested they not be named in order to discuss the confidential negotiations.

The county has begun the due diligence process of examining the property for possible structural problems or other issues before finalizing the transaction, which could take two to three months to complete, the sources said.

In a statement to The Times, the county said that it had submitted a nonbinding “letter of interest” for the tower.

“Because we are seeing once-in-a-generation price reductions for commercial real estate in the downtown area, as responsible stewards of public funds, the County is doing its due diligence and evaluating the possibility of acquiring property in the Civic Center area, such as the Gas Company Tower,” the statement said.

Supervisor Janice Hahn, who is the daughter of longtime supervisor Kenneth Hahn, said in a separate statement to The Times that she is not fully on board with the acquisition.

“I am uncomfortable with the County moving forward purchasing this skyscraper until I understand the CEO’s full plan which I have yet to see. I am definitely against moving County services away from Los Angeles’ only Civic Center,” she said.

The Gas Company Tower represents “a generational investment opportunity to acquire a trophy asset at an exceptional basis,” Andrew Harper, a broker with the real estate firm JLL, said in May when JLL was hired to market the property. JLL declined to comment Tuesday on the pending sale.

The 52-story tower at 555 W. 5th St. was widely considered one of the city’s most prestigious office buildings when it was completed in 1991. It has about 1.4 million square feet of space on a 1.4-acre site at the base of Bunker Hill.

In recent years the downtown office market has turned against landlords as many tenants reduced their office footprint in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, when it became more common for employees to work remotely.

Last year, the owner of the Gas Company Tower, an affiliate of Brookfield Asset Management Ltd., defaulted on its debt and the property was put in receivership, in which a court-appointed representative took custody of the building to help creditors recover funds they lent to Brookfield. The building has roughly $465 million in outstanding loans.

Elevated interest rates have weighed on prices by making it difficult for building owners to refinance debt and pushing them into quick sales or foreclosures. Some downtown L.A. office tenants have expressed concern in recent years that the streets feel less safe than they did before the pandemic and have left for other local office centers including Century City.

The Gas Company Tower was renovated in 2023 and the tower currently is more than half leased to tenants including Southern California Gas Co., financial consulting firm Deloitte and law firm Latham & Watkins, according to real estate data provider CoStar.

Office vacancy in downtown Los Angeles was more than 30% in the second quarter, real estate brokerage CBRE said, more than triple the level typically considered to be a healthy balance between tenant and landlord interests.

Falling office values downtown are catching the attention of buyers seeking to grab property at a low point in the market, said Petra Durnin, a real estate analyst at Raise Commercial Real Estate who is not involved in the deal.

“Unfortunate situations can create opportunities for others with the cash,” Durnin said. “Downtown has been through boom and bust cycles before and always reinvented itself.”

A nearby 52-story office tower formerly owned by Brookfield at 777 S. Figueroa St. is set to be sold at the significantly discounted price of $120 million, or $117 a square foot, the Commercial Observer reported. It came close to selling for about $145 million a few months ago but the deal fell apart.

In its statement to The Times, the county said it was eyeing the Gas Company Tower as an alternative to seismically retrofitting its downtown properties. The county owns 33 facilities that engineers say are vulnerable to collapse during a major earthquake, including the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, which has been the headquarters of Los Angeles County government for six decades, home to the offices of hundreds of employees and the five county supervisors.

Last year, the county pledged to upgrade all 33 vulnerable buildings within the decade, an ambitious undertaking that experts say would cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Sony Corp.-owned video game company Bungie said Wednesday it would lay off 17% of its workforce — or 220 people — amid economic difficulties in the gaming industry.

The Bellevue, Wash., firm said the layoffs will affect every level of the company, including executives and senior leadership. The company said it will offer severance, bonus and healthcare coverage to affected employees.

“As we’ve navigated the broader economic realities over the last year, and after exhausting all other mitigation options, this has become a necessary decision to refocus our studio and our business with more realistic goals and viable financials,” Bungie Chief Executive Pete Parsons said in a post on the company website.

The “Destiny 2” and “Halo” creator had rapidly expanded while trying to work on games from three separate video game franchises. Sony, the PlayStation maker, acquired the company in 2022. Bungie was founded in 1991.

But by 2023, as the economy cooled, the video game industry started to course correct after its massive expansion during the pandemic. Bungie, in particular, also faced a “quality miss” with its “Destiny 2: Lightfall” game, Parsons said.

“We were overly ambitious, our financial safety margins were subsequently exceeded, and we began running in the red,” he said in the post.

The company plans to rely more heavily on its parent company going forward. Parsons said about 12% of its jobs, or 155 roles, will be integrated into Sony Interactive Entertainment over the next few quarters, a move that reduced the number of layoffs. The company will also spin off a new “science-fantasy” action game into its own studio under PlayStation Studios to allow further development, Parsons said.

Bungie isn’t the only video game company that’s faced layoffs in the last two years. Last year, at least 6,500 workers worldwide were laid off, according to a Times analysis, including hundreds at California-based companies like Unity and Riot Games.