Mr. Beast and Amazon Sued by Former Contestants Over Sexual Harassment, ‘Chronic Mistreatment’

Mr. Beast, the globally fashionable YouTube star, is facing caller contention this week aft a fig of erstwhile contestants successful his upcoming Beast Games person alleged they suffered intersexual harassment and “chronic mistreatment” during their stint with the world TV competition. The suit besides lists Amazon, which produced the show, arsenic a suspect successful the case.

There person been different caller problems for the viral star, whose existent sanction is Jimmy Donaldson. Earlier this month, Donaldson hired a renowned lawyer to behaviour an audit of his company, and to reportedly assistance him fend disconnected allegations made by a erstwhile worker who has been posting widely viewed videos connected YouTube claiming Donaldson is simply a “sociopath” and a “fraud.”

The caller suit compounds Donaldson’s problems. Variety, which primitively broke the story astir the suit, uploaded a copy of the litigation to the web. The complaint, which was filed connected behalf of 5 anonymous erstwhile contestants, alleges that the defendants “created moving conditions that jeopardized the information of workers, including by not providing capable nutrient oregon drink…not having capable aesculapian unit connected tract and not providing tenable aesculapian care, forcing them not to sleep, and forcing them to enactment successful games that unreasonably risked carnal and intelligence injury.”

While the claims are serious, the ones provided are not ever ace specific. For instance, the suit makes wide claims astir intersexual favoritism connected acceptable but doesn’t supply immoderate factual examples of it—at slightest not publicly. The conception connected intersexual harassment has been redacted successful an effort to “limit nationalist viewing successful a bully religion effort to comply with Defendants’ overbroad confidentiality provisions (which Plaintiffs allege are unenforceable), arsenic good arsenic to sphere the confidentiality and privateness interests of the Plaintiffs who privation to debar opprobrium,” the suit states.

A punctuation from 1 of the defendants is provided arsenic such: “I wanted to articulation due to the fact that I was a instrumentality of MrBeast and his videos made maine grin during the COVID-19 pandemic. I expected to beryllium challenged, but I didn’t deliberation I would beryllium treated similar thing — little than nothing. And arsenic 1 of the women, I tin accidental it perfectly felt similar a hostile situation for us. We honestly could not person been respected little — arsenic people, overmuch little employees — if they tried.”

The closest happening to a circumstantial ailment that the litigation gets is simply a notation of an worker handbook that was seemingly distributed during the sprout that encouraged the antheral endowment to “be idiots” and that claimed it’s good for the antheral contestants to “be childish,” presumably due to the fact that it made for amended content.

The suit besides claims that the accumulation broke California laws by misclassifying the contestants’ employment presumption to the Nevada Film Commission to person a $2 cardinal taxation credit. Here, again, the ailment is redacted, truthful it’s hard to afloat grasp what the companies are being accused of. The ailment claims that the defendants utilized this misclassification “as a mendacious justification to debar paying employment taxes and to spare the Production the costs of implementing assorted employment protections required nether California law, including, minimum wages, overtime, mandatory repast and remainder breaks, workers compensation benefits, itemized wage statements and timely outgo of wages and reimbursements.”

A New York Times story published successful August outlines akin concerns astir the moving conditions connected the acceptable of Beast Games but did not notation claims of intersexual harassment. Instead, the communicative catalogs a agelong database of different complaints, immoderate of which are much superior than others. For instance, immoderate participants claimed that they had been underfed and lone provided two, woefully tiny meals a time (the amusement maintains that they provided contestants 3 meals a day). The much superior allegations successful the communicative impact contestants who assertion that they were not provided medicine erstwhile they asked for it (one idiosyncratic said they were denied their insulin successful a timely fashion). In immoderate cases, contestants received their medicine “hours, oregon adjacent days, aft their scheduled dosing times,” the communicative claims. Some contestants were hospitalized arsenic a effect of immoderate of the challenges, the communicative besides notes.

The Times communicative besides mentions that Amazon primitively advertised the contention arsenic lone involving 1,000 contestants, whereas erstwhile the contention really started Donaldson revealed that the fig would really beryllium 2,000. Some contestants felt that they had been deceived astir their chances of winning the $5 million.

Gizmodo reached retired to Alex Spiro, an lawyer who is said to beryllium representing Donaldson, for remark connected the caller litigation. We besides reached retired to Amazon.

This evidently doesn’t look large for the world’s biggest YouTube star, though it’s hard to discern however superior the offenses really are, fixed the constricted accusation successful the complaint. The Times communicative from August cites contestants who said that during their archetypal screening, they were asked whether they would beryllium consenting to beryllium thrown disconnected a boat, buried alive, oregon “travel to outer space” to triumph the prize money. They were besides seemingly warned that information successful the games could pb to “death, illness, oregon superior bodily injury, including, but not constricted to exhaustion, dehydration, overexertion, burns, and vigor stroke.” As deranged arsenic those contractual stipulations are, anyone who agrees to perchance die to enactment successful a world TV amusement shouldn’t beryllium that amazed erstwhile the catering isn’t precisely top-notch.