Question about Paid auditions

I guess it depends on when you want to offer it if you want to offer free work after you get cast that's very much your prerogative and nobody can stop you, if you offer it in the audition thread it can sort of feel like you're using it as a means to get cast in the role ahead of the others, or it makes it seem like your performance isn't as worth it as the others.

tl;dr You can if you want, but it may be better to offer after you receive the role as opposed to before.

There was something like this that popped up on Twitter about a week ago, and a few pro VAs spoke up and said that if you're selling a game for money that those involved should be paid for their work. I can understand if your budget is real tight, that your project is a huge risk that might not be profitable in the slightest, or even the work is literally one or two lines at most. But if it's a decent amount of work for nothing while you all take in whatever the project makes, then that's not going to reflect well even though you'll probably still get some takers.

There were also two projects on here in recent months that did exactly what you're saying, being paid projects with either some or all roles being unpaid. The one changed from fully unpaid to paid work during the audition while the other made sure to completely disclose the larger roles that were paid and the smaller parts which weren't. Make it clear what the deal is with your project beforehand.

Edit: Oh, I read this wrong. I thought you were making a project, but it looks like you're on the other end of the spectrum by trying to get into a paid project by offering your services for free. That would also be a bad look since you'd be undercutting a lot of other actors out there if that happened, including yourself. You deserve to be paid for your work if said work is stated as paid!

You'd be doing yourself and the community a disservice. I say this is something I REALLY don't recommend doing. It's a weird question, I admit, but I think it's worth telling people here right now that if a paid project has a set rate, don't low ball yourself if you really believe in your talents, and I say to anyone casting that I wouldn't take low-ball offers either, as I think everyone wants what's best for the project, an agreed upon pay, and a choice of talent you believe fits the project best.

I have to echo the sentiments of everyone else here. Offering free work on a project that is stated as PAID communicates two things:
1) you don't believe your talent to be up to par with the rest of the voice actors who are getting paid for their work,
2) you don't care if you undermine other talent if it gives you an advantage in getting the role.

Now, I'm not saying that's what you ACTUALLY think, but the first one is how it will look to the casting director regardless, and the second one is how other voice actors would interpret it. I know I'd be pretty miffed if I was working on a paid indie game project and the casting director came back and said "oh sorry, someone else offered their services for free so we're going to take them instead". Perception does matter and when others work hard to try to make it more of the norm for indie games to pay for VAs, they probably wouldn't look so kindly on someone else lowballing them (for an example of this, look how a website called Voice Realm acted during the SAG video game strike by tweeting to game developers that "OUR voice actors will never ask for residuals!")

If it's a matter of just doing this as a hobby and wanting to help people out, I'd definitely recommend sticking to the unpaid projects section and trying your hand there. Paid projects here get tons of auditions, but a lot of the projects who are unable to offer payment tend to get a much slimmer selection of auditions and you can hone your skills there + have a better chance at participating.

If it's JUST out of the goodness of your heart kinda thing, at least wait until you are actually cast in the role, and then when you complete the work you could say something like "I'm willing to do this as a favor since this project looks really cool, so you don't have to worry about sending that payment after all." Unless it's a personal friend though they'd probably still send the payment anyway cause it's kinda the right thing to do.