The new Amazon game show Beast Games arrives with a heavy baggage load. At just 26, MrBeast (aka Jimmy Donaldson) has more YouTube subscribers than anyone else on the planet. He’s the third most-followed person on TikTok and has turned his fame into a sprawling business empire, including restaurants, chocolates, toys, clothes, and even Nerf guns. His influence among young audiences is immense, almost unfathomable. Simply put, he needs television a lot less than television needs him.
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But as Beast Games entered production, things quickly took a turn for the worse. In September, five contestants filed a 54-page class action lawsuit against MrBeast’s production company and Amazon, claiming widespread mistreatment, inadequate compensation, and “serious emotional distress,” including suffering, anxiety, humiliation, and shame. As a result, Beast Games debuted amid a storm of controversy.
Here’s the thing: shows can often survive scandals if they’re entertaining enough. Think of how Strictly Come Dancing shrugged off bullying allegations, or how Squid Game: The Challenge faced accusations of mistreatment but still found success. So the real question here is: is Beast Games compelling enough to make people forget the lawsuit?
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The answer depends on how much you like MrBeast. If you’re a fan of his YouTube antics, with their over-the-top displays of wealth and excessive challenges, this show will likely be a hit. Beast Games is essentially YouTube on steroids—1,000 contestants fighting for a $5 million prize in a series of extravagant stunts, from pulling monster trucks to answering trivia questions. But if you’re unfamiliar with MrBeast, you may find yourself wondering why a TV show exists around a loud, overenthusiastic man who seems intent on ripping off Squid Game.
And let’s not mince words—Beast Games owes its very existence to Squid Game. The parallels are glaring, to the point where it feels almost like copyright infringement. It’s a reality competition where hundreds of contestants compete in bizarre challenges to win a huge cash prize, all while living in close quarters. The one big difference is that Squid Game was a dystopian satire on the exploitation of the vulnerable for entertainment. MrBeast, on the other hand, seems to have missed that point entirely.
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What’s most troubling is the show’s cruelty. The bulk of the challenges are built around self-sacrifice, forcing contestants to give up their chances at the grand prize for the sake of advancing others. The result is a display of desperation and humiliation, with endless pleading, crying, and tantrums. All this, for a prize they are statistically unlikely to win. I honestly can’t recall a more undignified spectacle on TV.
The emotional manipulation doesn’t stop there. Contestants seem to wear their sob stories like badges of honor, making tearful pleas about how they need the money to help homeless kids or escape poverty. One contestant even tries to garner sympathy by claiming he needs the $5 million to create passive income for the rest of his life. It’s a relentless parade of melodrama that makes you wish the grand prize was a lesson in basic human perspective.
But, of course, that wouldn’t make for good TV. Instead, we get the unappealing sight of a thousand contestants begging for attention, all while MrBeast, with his booming voice and catchphrases like “Everybody has a price!”—as if he’s an off-brand Joker—stands at the center, pulling the strings.
There’s something perversely compelling about Beast Games, but it’s the same kind of compulsive fascination you get from picking at a scab. The show exists solely to showcase the worst of human behavior, packaged in the most obnoxious way possible. In other words, the lawsuits might have been the least of the problems with this show.
