[imagesource: Netflix]

Netflix decided to take the original twisted South Korean thriller up a notch by gathering 456 real-life contestants willing to compete for a $4,56 million prize in a reality game show.

That’ll make Squid Game: The Challenge the show with the largest cast and cash prize in TV history by the way.

This was exciting for some and concerning for others most of whom were wondering how the streamer was going to orchestrate a game show in which people compete in a series of deadly games for millions in prize money.

Their concern was not unfounded as Rolling Stone revealed that some contestants have claimed the “inhumane” conditions and “38-second massacre” earned it the nickname “Rigged Game”.

Filming had barely wrapped up at the start of the month when reports began to pour out about how the show’s production was a complete disaster.

Four former players, anonymous because of their NDA agreements, detailed their experiences to the magazine:

“It was just the cruelest, meanest thing I’ve ever been through,” one former contestant tells Rolling Stone. “We were a human horse race, and they were treating us like horses out in the cold racing and [the race] was fixed.”

“All the torment and trauma we experienced wasn’t due to the game or the rigor of the game,” another former player adds. “It was the incompetencies of scale — they bit off more than they could chew.”

The “38-second massacre” was described by three former players, saying that despite a large group of contestants making it across the finish line with time remaining on the clock (meaning they had successfully made it through to the next round) their blood squib packs went off without warning, and they were told they had been eliminated.

“They went crazy,” one contestant recalls.

To really add to the “this was rigged from the beginning” claim, two contestants said their return flights were already booked as if everyone knew when they would be eliminated:

“Instead of Squid Game, [they] are calling it ‘Rigged Game.’ Instead of Netflix, they’re calling it ‘Net Fix,’ because it was clearly obvious,” one former player adds.

Sources also confirmed earlier reports that the real-life version of the ‘Red Light, Green Light’ game was done in inhumane conditions, with contestants forced to spend up to nine hours inside a freezing airport hangar:

The freezing conditions resulted in at least 10 people collapsing during the game, sources say, with medics being screamed for as people fell and convulsed on the ground. One alleges that medics took ages to reach the players because producers were worried about the camera shots being ruined. As a solution, masked people in pink jumpsuits were sent out on the floor with black coffins and positioned themselves to block out the medics attending to the fallen player — all while the rest of the contestants remained frozen in place.

Because a life-changing amount of money was on the line, contestants did what they would never do in reality:

“People were beating themselves up, including myself, around the fact that you’ve got a girl convulsing and we’re all stood there like statues. On what planet is that even humane?” asks one former contestant.

“Obviously, you would jump and help — that’s what our human nature is for most of us. But absolutely it’s a social experiment. It played on our morals and it’s sick. It’s absolutely sick.”

Netflix did confirm in a statement that three contestants sought medical attention for minor conditions, but defended the safety of the production:

“We’ve taken all the appropriate safety precautions, including after care for contestants – and an independent adjudicator is overseeing each game to ensure it’s fair to everyone,” the statement added.

But sources are saying that they are missing the point of the complaints, that the game seemed to have been rigged from the very beginning:

The former players claim that some contestants — several of whom were TikTok and Instagram influencers — appeared to be pre-selected to advance to the next round no matter the outcome of the first game, and were fully mic’d up while a majority of the eliminated contestants had dummy microphones around their necks. One former player claims rules were bent to heighten a contestant’s storyline, and another says they witnessed an eliminated player being put back into the game.

One other contestant said the producers probably wanted “people to not think about their health, to not care about their safety” and be all in no matter what.

There were injuries galore, including one player sustaining a herniated disc and a torn knee tendon, with other players developing pneumonia, colds, and ear infections after playing, too.

After all this, a few players are seeking legal advice to see if there are grounds for a lawsuit against the production studios for workplace safety violations, negligence and false pretences.

[source:rollingstone]