On Dec. 19, Amazon Prime Video released the first two episodes of the Beast Games, one of the largest and most ambitious reality shows to date. Created by Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, the 10-episode show takes the formula from his 330 million-subscriber YouTube empire and amplifies it with 1,000 contestants competing for a $5 million prize.
Donaldson had his first taste of virality in 2017 when he was just an edgy teenager counting to 100,000 and giving away money to pizza delivery drivers. Since then, his content has skyrocketed in both popularity and production value, pulling off massive challenges like having people ages one to 100 compete for $500,000 or having one subscriber beat football legend Cristiano Ronaldo in a game to see who can hit the most targets for $1 million. Now the world’s largest YouTuber, Donaldson has his own line of chocolate bars, restaurant partnerships, brand deals, and lunch snack collaborations that earn him a reported $700 million a year.
The critical reception to Beast Games has not been positive — IGN called it “largely dull and without much of anything to get invested in” and The Guardian wrote that it “exists solely to show us the worst of the human condition, as obnoxiously as possible.”
Before its premiere, Donaldson had been boasting about his show’s sheer scope and size. He tweeted that it broke 40 Guinness World Records, including the “largest cash prize, most contestants, and most cameras ever.” (According to the Guinness website, some records like “Most Money Given Away in a First Episode” did not have previous winners.) Donaldson has also bragged about Beast Games being “ranked #1” in almost 90 countries, though Amazon doesn’t release viewership data so it’s impossible to know how many views that is.
Yet Beast Games production did not go smoothly, with multiple outlets reporting on the difficult conditions those competing and working on the event had to endure. Rolling Stone spoke with a dozen crew members and contestants in September and since then, three more contestants have come forward to share their stories, documents, and pictures, revealing just how much chaos there was in the making of this record-breaking show.
Beast Games origins
Amazon first announced the series in March 2024. “When MrBeast first told us about his concept for the show, we were blown away by his ambition to make Beast Games the biggest reality competition series ever,” Vernon Sanders, Amazon Studios’ co-head of television, said in a press release. Donaldson, for his part, was psyched with the freedom they let him have: “Amazon gave me the creative control I need to try and make it happen,” he said. By May, production company Mystic Art Pictures had put out a call for contestants, who were asked questions like, “Are you willing to be buried alive?” and, ”Are you more of a hero or a villain?”
The show cost “way more than $100 million” to produce, Donaldson said on Logan Paul’s Impaulsive podcast, noting that he “managed to lose tens of millions of dollars filming this show,” though he didn’t specify if the money came from him or Amazon. (Amazon and a spokesperson for MrBeast declined to comment). He also claimed that $20 million was spent on just prizes, with other costs like a $14 million set in Toronto, “1,400 cameras running simultaneously,” and “over 100 people editing.” According to a behind-the-scenes video by YouTuber Mrwhosetheboss, the Vegas shoot cost $14 million to produce.
Things begin to go wrong in Las Vegas
In July, Beast Games flew 2,000 contestants to Las Vegas for a three-day competition at Allegiant Stadium, to film a promotional video for the MrBeast YouTube channel. According to Vital Vegas, contestants were heralded into the stadium wearing garbage bags over their clothes, to hide their jerseys, and were expected to stay there for the entirety of the shoot. Scott Leopold, an Austin-based actor who competed in the Vegas round of Beast Games, told Rolling Stone that part of the reason they competed was to get a TV credit, and was disappointed to learn that the first leg of the production was only going on YouTube.
Things began to go wrong almost immediately. According to an investigation by Las Vegas 3 News, the shoot was disorganized and conditions became unsanitary — one contestant said she saw a person in a sleeping bag “covered in excrement” after apparently positioning themselves too close to an overflowing portable toilet. Others struggled to obtain their needed medications, like insulin, after they were told they couldn’t bring anything into the stadium but that they would be given their medicine back once inside. According to the New York Times, contestants competed in grueling physical challenges, yet some “had not received adequate food or medical care.” A spokesperson for MrBeast declined to comment on these claims. According to a source close to production, the Las Vegas shoot had six hospitalizations. A MrBeast spokesperson previously told Rolling Stone the shoot was “unfortunately complicated by the CrowdStrike incident” — a widespread IT outage due to a faulty system update — “extreme weather, and other unexpected logistical and communications issues.”
After the show’s premiere, contestants started to share their experiences appearing on the show, both positive and negative. In TikTok videos, one contestant said they went “all day without any meal,” and another showed off the piles of sleeping bags that were handed out at the stadium. “Anyone could have walked out at any time, nobody was prevented from leaving,” one contestant shared on their YouTube channel. “If anyone says they were trapped for real, they weren’t, but I guess we were trapped because we wanted the $5 million.”
Amanda Rose, a competitor in Las Vegas, appeared in a video with YouTuber Rosanna Pansino, who often posts videos questioning Donaldson’s practices, claiming that she received a traumatic brain injury after being kicked in the head during a game. Rose tells Rolling Stone that she filed an incident report with local authorities when she returned home to California, but when she reported the incident to the Las Vegas police department, they declined to file a report. “I would have never attended these games or been in any way associated with a brand that appears to place views and clicks over human well-being,” Rose says. (LVPD did not return a request for comment, and a spokesperson for MrBeast declined to comment.)
In September, five unnamed participants filed a lawsuit against Amazon and Donaldson for “chronic mistreatment,” “sexual harassment” and “failure to pay minimum wages.” A spokesperson for the contestant’s law firm declined to comment because of the “active ongoing legal investigation.” According to the summary online, the case status is “pending” with the next hearing set for March. A spokesperson for MrBeast MrBeast told Rolling Stone that the lawsuit had still not been served to Donaldson or Amazon.
In Toronto, conditions improved for participants — but the crew had complaints
In late August, a miniature village appeared in downtown Toronto with cabins, tables, a basketball court, and a large tower. Six contestants tell Rolling Stone that their conditions improved from the previous shoot and that they were given ample food and comfortable lodging. “They were better at [making] sure everybody was cool and had ample food, more than enough around,” one contestant tells Rolling Stone. “They made sure we were super good, because of the backlash.”
Some of the crew claim they had a much more difficult time, with seven people who worked on the show telling Rolling Stone that production was “wild” and “disorganized.” During a record rainstorm in August, one production assistant tells Rolling Stone workers were “told to keep working with piles of electrical equipment literally submerged under water.” In a behind-the-scenes video from YouTubers Colin and Samir, you can see members of production working while the storm leaks inside the set.
Another two crew members tell Rolling Stone that during a 90-degree heat wave, the warehouse they were working in turned off “air conditioning and fans during certain challenges because they didn’t want to interfere with the ‘atmosphere’” of filming and conditions “were not ideal.”
The crew members who spoke with Rolling Stone describe an environment that was fast-paced but loose with safety to keep up with the production demands. Days regularly went past 12 hours, and employees were often tasked with working more than seven days in a row. According to a pay stub reviewed by Rolling Stone, in September, one crew member worked over 80 hours a week.
Crew members also suffered injuries on set. According to multiple crew members who spoke with Rolling Stone who had heard about the incident from those present, including one who was on set when it happened, on Sept. 11, a six-foot by six-foot piece of the exterior of the tower fell on a crew member while the set was being packed away. The crew member was injured and rushed off to the hospital. “He was on the ground until the ambulance showed up,” one PA says. “It just fucking nailed the dude as he was just walking by underneath and not under a part of the tower that they were actively working on at the time.” Rolling Stone was unable to contact with the crew member. A MrBeast spokesperson declined to comment on the incident.
Some participants felt “cheated”
According to the Beast Games trailer, “41 unique challenges” were created to test the competitors’ mettle. These challenges, according to contestants, ranged from simple trivia to physical feats like pulling a truck. Testers were brought in to try the challenges before contestants, according to posts on employee messaging boards and social media seen by Rolling Stone. A source close to production says there was “a very robust, experienced safety team, which included coordinators for stunts, medication, medical, and pharmacists who had to adhere to all sorts of safety guidelines.”
However, one of these challenges in Toronto led to a controversy amongst competitors, three of whom we spoke with who felt they were “cheated” by the game.
Labeled “Sacrifice Row” by an internal email seen by Rolling Stone, 900 players were broken up into 12 rows and placed on pedestals five feet apart. These players were given instructions to press a button to eliminate themselves and their row would be safe, while the last three rows to pick were eliminated. This was the second challenge in the first episode of Beast Games, eliminating 252 players. According to contestants who spoke with Rolling Stone, the rules for the game appeared “hours” beforehand on a monitor on the set giving those who saw a perceived advantage in the competition and the time to strategize with teammates. The game was expected to go for 10 minutes but only lasted 12 seconds.
Two eyewitness competitors tell Rolling Stone that members of the group refused to leave Toronto for multiple days, having numerous meetings with production staff and their lawyers in an attempt to roll back the results. This could also be attributed to the frustration of having spent all of that time and energy to be eliminated by what they felt was a technicality.
According to an Aug. 31 email sent from the Beast Games account, a third-party review “concluded that the technical difficulty that occurred during the game ‘Sacrifice Row’ did not create an unfair advantage to any team, nor did it create an unfair disadvantage to any team.” Representatives for MrBeast declined to comment, but according to a source close to production, Beast Games’ insurance advisors “conducted a full and thorough investigation and determined there was no advantage or disadvantage provided to any team.”
The group collectively tried to bargain with those at MrBeast, assembling a Discord server for members of the production and the eliminated players, who dubbed themselves “The Beastlings.” In a message seen by Rolling Stone from Oct. 15, a leader of the group posted in the chat “CONFIRMED: The Beast Team is actively prioritizing drawing from the Beastling population when casting.” Mike Cruz, the CEO of MrBeast Studio commented, “Sorry for the confusion guys, Literally (Casting) asked me how to get peoples’… height and sizes and pictures and stuff without having to dig through the Mystic spreadsheets.”
According to a Google Form from Nov. 6 reviewed by Rolling Stone, those eliminated were offered the chance “to prioritize your consideration for upcoming roles” in MrBeast content in exchange for not “sharing any information about this community or its backstory with any outside parties or participating in a class action lawsuit” for 45 days after the form was submitted. “We would give them priority over contestants who advanced further in the competition, but no promises or guarantees made,” a source close to production says.
According to two contestants, Beast Games production paid for the hotel rooms of those who refused to leave. “The contestants that [felt they] got cheated out of the sacrifice game did not leave the hotel for over five days after and the Beast team was threatening to kick them out,” one competitor says. “So many contestants want to speak up, but are scared of the NDA.”
Donaldson speaks out
For most of Beast Games’ production, Donaldson remained silent about what happened on set, only tweeting in July to announce that his second-in-command, Ava Tyson, was kicked out of the company after allegations she had spoken inappropriately to a minor and had a sexual relationship with her executive assistant. In a statement on X, Tyson said they “apologize for any of my past behavior or comments” adding that they “never groomed anyone.”
It wasn’t until November, after a three-month investigation into the company concluded, that Donaldson started talking about some of the accusations — both about Tyson and what happened on the set of Beast Games.
For his first sitdown interview, Donaldson chose YouTuber Caleb Phelps on his 5.6 million-subscriber channel Oompaville. Donaldson said that claims of “dozens of broken bones” on set are “crazy.” (In a July Rosanna Pansino video, the YouTuber read a text they received from a contestant claiming they saw people with “broken bones.” A source close to production claims that there were no “broken bones.”) “We did mess up on little things and there are definitely things we could have done better, but then it’s mixed in with like all these crazy outrageous claims,” Donaldson said.
“We have tons of behind-the-scenes dropping when the show does to show how blown out of proportion these claims were,” Donaldson wrote on Nov. 25 X in response to a commenter asking about “contestants (that) complained of terrible conditions.” But as the show continues to roll out, contestants are now able to speak about the show, meaning videos are cropping up across YouTube — perhaps giving us a clearer picture of what really went on during the filming of Beast Games.