MrBeast‘s team has issued a statement addressing comments he made in an old video resurfaced by fellow YouTuber Rosanna Pansino, but hasn’t yet addressed Pansino’s allegations that the ongoing production of his $100 million Amazon reality series Beast Games has created dangerous conditions for contestants resulting in broken bones and withholding of medication and sanitary products.
Pansino, who has 14.5 million subscribers on YouTube and has starred in creator collaborations like Joey Graceffa‘s Escape the Night, has been at odds with MrBeast (aka Jimmy Donaldson) since the filming of his 2021 Creator Games competition $1,000,000 Influencer Tournament!Late last year, she alleged that she’d finished the competition in third place, but Donaldson had edited her performance so it looked like she’d performed worse. (She later deleted her posts, saying she’d received death threats.)
Now, she’s speaking to some of the over 1,000 contestants who are similarly competing in Beast Games, and has been chronicling the allegations on her YouTube channel. She says she’s spoken to over 200 people involved in the production, and that there are consistent reports of lack of food, water, sleep, and medical attention. One contestant alleged she’d seen other competitors have seizures because meds were inaccessible.
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That same contestant accused the show of being “rigged” because all its events “are about speed and strength, [s]o only the young athletic males were at an advantage over the women and elderly people that were casted.” She went on to say that once male contestants realized they could “take out the women without being eliminated,” they began tackling and hitting women during the events. “Two girls were tackled and passed out on the field and dragged off to continue filming,” she said. “I saw people with broken bones, stitches etc. and most were women.”
The contestant said all participants were offered $1,000 at the end of filming if they signed away their rights to participate in any future class action lawsuits. She claimed that after allegations about the production began going public, MrBeast’s team contacted her again and offered another $1,000 to compensate for “inconveniences,” plus offered to provide free therapy sessions to contestants who wanted them.
It’s interesting to note these allegations are similar to the ones directed at Netflix‘sSquid Game: The Challenge reality show, which debuted late last year.
Pansino has so far posted four YouTube videos containing allegations against Beast Games. She’s also been speaking about the allegations on Twitter, where she circulated a 2017 MrBeast video that showed him responding to a viewer comment about selling Black people for money by saying, “The most I would pay is probably 300.”
The AP further reports there are video clips where Donaldson used hom*ophobic slurs and one 2017 podcast recording where he can be heard asking if any of the guests or hosts would have sex with then-14-year-old rapper Bhad Babie. The video of the podcast was allegedly removed by YouTube for violating its community guidelines, per AP, but the podcast co-host Leon Lush took to Twitter to address Donaldson’s comments. “Also relevant was our general demeanor at the time,” Lush explains, “as [Donaldson] also said this at another point on the podcast. ‘Let’s say something offensive that people can take out of context.'” Lush continues, “Don’t tell me manifestation isn’t real because here we are almost a decade later.” Donaldson was 19 years old at the time of the podcast’s recording.
“When Jimmy was a teenager he acted like many kids and used inappropriate language while trying to be funny,” a spokesperson for MrBeast told The Associated Press. “Over the years he has repeatedly apologized and has learned that increasing influence comes with increased responsibility to be more aware and more sensitive to the power of language. After making some bad jokes and other mistakes when he was younger, as an adult he has focused on engaging with the MrBeast community to work together on making a positive impact around the world.”
These videos resurfaced in the wake of allegations against longtime MrBeast collaborator Ava Kris Tyson, who was accused of sending inappropriate messages to a 13-year-old when she was 20. She’s since left the company, with MrBeast saying he has hired an external investigator to look into the allegations.
Following Tyson’s allegations, there have been an increasing number of videos scrutinizing MrBeast and his videos. One of the first and most viewed is from a former employee going by the alias DogPack404. His video, I Worked For MrBeast, He’s A Fraud, has been viewed nearly 8 million times, and claims MrBeast rigs the contests in his videos.
Chucky Appleby, who runs Donaldson’s “Ideas & Thumbnails” team and co-founded analytics platform ViewStats with him, posted an extensive response to DogPack404’s video dissecting various allegations. He also said DogPack404 was fired from the MrBeast team within a month because of “erratic behavior.”
“Jimmy spends unfathomable amounts of money and time to ensure the integrity of what he does,” he said. “I hate to see it come into question with a bunch of lies.”
I quickly want to debunk some of the info in this video since the guy who made it was on my team. It was my decision to fire him for erratic behavior, he worked at the company for less than a month and wasn’t an employee for most of the videos he mentions to have knowledge on.… pic.twitter.com/Xz0DMgated
— chucky (@chucky) July 29, 2024
Neither Donaldson nor his team has responded to allegations regarding Beast Games. We reached out for comment, but did not hear back by press time. We’ll update this story with any new information.
