Contestants on Netflix’s “Squid Game: The Challenge” have reportedly renamed the competition series the “Rigged Game” as they call filming an “inhumane” experience.
The show is inspired by the streaming giant‘s wildly popular fictional 2021 series “Squid Game,” which showed poor people participating in gruesome games for millions of dollars. The real-life version, which reportedly began filming last week, boasts 456 contestants vying for $4.56 million — allegedly the biggest prize money ever given out on a TV game show.
But traumatized players — whose names were not disclosed — reportedly told the rock bible that the show’s production was disastrous and dangerous, claiming at least 10 people collapsed while spending up to nine hours in a freezing airport hangar for a game they were told would only take two hours.
One even alleged that medics did not respond to ill contestants quickly because producers were concerned about ruining the footage, Rolling Stone reported.
“I’m shaking, and I’m talking about, like, I’m-on-top-of-Mount-Everest-and-I’ve-got-nothing-on shaking,” one told the mag.
“It was just the cruelest, meanest thing I’ve ever been through,” one former player told Rolling Stone about the experience. “We were a human horse race, and they were treating us like horses out in the cold racing, and [the race] was fixed.”
A player also observed an every-man-for-himself attitude among contestants as they pushed through treacherous conditions in the hopes of winning the life-altering cash prize.
“People were beating themselves up, including myself, around the fact that you’ve got a girl convulsing, and [we] all stood there like statues. On what planet is that even humane?” they asked.
“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.”
