The production company of MrBeast, the world’s most popular YouTuber, is being sued alongside Amazon by participants in his reality TV show “Beast Games,” who claim they were exploited during filming.
• Also read: YouTuber MrBeast embroiled in controversy: Contestants on his show are said to be going through hell
The series, which has yet to be released, is inspired by the YouTube videos that made MrBeast famous, in which he offers money to strangers on the condition that they complete daring or extreme challenges.
The show featured 1,000 contestants competing for a $5 million jackpot.
Five of them filed a complaint Monday in a Los Angeles court, denouncing “mistreatment”: the candidates were not properly paid, did not always have meal breaks and worked in a toxic work environment, where sexual harassment was tolerated.
MrBeast’s company and Amazon “shamelessly exploited the work” of the participants, according to the complaint, recalling that the budget of the series was “100 million dollars.”
The value of the show “is derived directly from the physical and emotional work of the contestants who compete under difficult conditions,” the plaintiffs insist in this document.
This class action aims to compensate all participants in the series by paying them a real salary.
Such class actions rarely result in litigation in the United States and are usually settled amicably through financial agreements.
MrBeast, real name Jimmy Donaldson, and Amazon did not immediately respond to AFP’s requests for comment.
The American influencer has over 300 million subscribers on YouTube. In 2023, Time magazine named him one of the most influential people in the world.
The same year, Forbes estimated his fortune at around half a billion dollars.
