Janice R. Andrews
On September 16, a case was filed in Los Angeles on behalf of five contestants from MrBeast’s planned competition show, Beast Games. The participants have not been named. MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, and Amazon are both named in the lawsuit. Amazon plans to stream the show on its Prime Video service. The case also wants to be a class action.
Beast Games was made to be a high-stakes game show with a $5 million prize for the last player left in a group of 1,000. But the case says that contestants had to deal with bad conditions, being mistreated, and being harassed during the competition. Among the 14 specific claims are failing to pay the minimum wage, sexual harassment, fake advertising, and breaking rules about meal and rest breaks.
The wrong labelling of contestants is an important part of the case. The claimants say that California law says they were workers, but they were wrongly labelled as contractors so that MrBeast and Amazon could get tax breaks. The contestants also said that there were more than 1,000 people actually competing—as many as 2,000 people—which they said was dishonest and hurt their chances of winning.
The claim also says that the production staff created a toxic work environment for the female contestants, calling it a “culture of misogyny and sexism.”
MrBeast has been in court before, when he fought Virtual Dining Concepts for hurting his reputation with badly made MrBeast Burgers. In answer, VDC sued him again for $100 million.
At this point, neither MrBeast nor Amazon have said anything about the case. Beast Games was supposed to come out on Amazon Prime, but there is still no official release date.
