Contestants on Netflix’s “Squid Game: The Challenge” have reportedly renamed the competition series the “Rigged Game” as they call filming an “inhumane” experience.
4 people claiming to be competing on the upcoming season described themselves to Rolling Stone as TV “extras” in an influencer-heavy game predetermined by producers. The Post contacted Netflix for comment.
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 hundreds of thousands of dollars. The actual-life version, which reportedly began filming last week, boasts 456 contestants vying for $4.56 million — allegedly the most important prize money ever given out on a TV game show.
But traumatized players — whose names weren’t disclosed — reportedly told the rock bible that the show’s production was disastrous and dangerous, claiming not less than 10 people collapsed while spending as much as nine hours in a freezing airport hangar for a game they were told would only take two hours.
One even alleged that medics didn’t reply to unwell 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.
Netflix previously denied allegations that filming was like a “war zone.”
“While it was very cold on set — and participants were prepared for that — any claims of significant injury are unfaithful,” Netflix and producers Studio Lambert and The Garden said in a recent statement, Deadline reported. “We care deeply concerning the health and safety of our solid and crew, and invested in all the suitable safety procedures.”
“It was just the cruelest, meanest thing I’ve ever been through,” one former player told Rolling Stone concerning the experience. “We were a human horse race, they usually were treating us like horses out within the cold racing, and [the race] was fixed.”
“All of the torment and trauma we experienced wasn’t on account of the sport or the rigor of the sport,” one other former player adds. “It was the incompetencies of scale — they bit off greater than they might chew,” they added.
The ex-players alleged that several contestants are TikTok and Instagram influencers whose time in the sport gave the impression to be as much as producers as an alternative of based on their performance in challenges. One explained that the influencers appeared to all the time be mic’d up, while those that were eliminated had fake microphones around their necks.
“It really wasn’t a game show. It was a TV show, and we were principally extras in a TV show,” one stated.
Three players also claimed a big group successfully crossed the finish line and beat the clock for a game — now being called the “38-second massacre” — only to be cut when producers reviewed the footage.
Two former contestants claimed their return flights were already booked before they even began playing. Their flights back home were scheduled to take off right after they were eliminated, Rolling Stone reported.
“As an alternative of ‘Squid Game,’ [they] are calling it ‘Rigged Game.’ As an alternative of Netflix, they’re calling it ‘Net Fix,’ since it was clearly obvious,” one former player added.
A player also observed an every-man-for-himself attitude amongst contestants as they pushed through treacherous conditions within the hopes of winning the life-altering money prize.
“People were beating themselves up, including myself, across the incontrovertible fact that you’ve got a woman convulsing, and [we] all stood there like statues. On what planet is that even humane?” they asked.
“Obviously, you’ll jump and help — that’s what our human nature is for many of us. But absolutely it’s a social experiment. It played on our morals, and it’s sick. It’s absolutely sick.”