Netflix’s ‘The Squid Game’ Reality Show Goes Awry: “The Conditions Were Absolutely Inhumane”
Anonymous contestants assure that there were injuries and fainting and that, in addition, the game is rigged.
It seems that Netflix has gotten out of hand the reality show of ‘The game of the squid’ . Before the Korean series, which became an unprecedented global phenomenon in 2021, returns with a second season of ‘The Squid Game’ , we will have a reality version , in which real contestants will face each other in a series of games like those of fiction; only, in this case, they will not be lethal, of course. But that does not mean that the candidates for the program will be completely free of danger: apparently, the production of the reality show has been carried out in conditions that some anonymous participants have called “inhumane.”
Participants of the reality show El juego del squid assure that the contest is rigged
In 2022 we learned that Netflix intended to squeeze the success of ‘ The Squid Game ‘ and liven up the wait until the premiere of its second season with a reality show called ‘The Squid Game: The Challenge’. Like the twisted quiz show in the original series, the reality show also features 456 contestants who compete against each other in a series of children’s games for the loot. In the case of the program, the sum of the grand prize is somewhat less than that of fiction, but still not insignificant: 4.56 million dollars.
From the beginning, the platform made it clear that the worst thing that could happen to a reality contestant was to go home empty-handed. However, several informants have made it known to different media that, without ever going to the extremes of ‘El juego del squid’, the conditions in which the program has been filmed have not been the most desirable.
The “inhumane conditions” of Netflix’s The Squid Game reality show:low temperatures, fainting, injuries…
Zero-degree temperatures, untimely recording schedules, long periods of time immobile, injuries… The contestants — who did not get paid to participate in the reality show — have given an account of the difficulties they had to face during the filming of the program. According to a source, at least ten participants of ‘The Squid Game: The Challenge’ fainted on the first day of filming alone, possibly due to the cold and fatigue after eight hours waiting for the games to start, and required assistance from set doctors on several occasions.
“This is not Last Standing,” complained a British player, identified only as John. “If they had told us it was going to be that cold, none of us would have gone ahead.” Another contestant from the UK, Marlene, said the on-set experience was “not as extreme as people say, but definitely not as minimal as Netflix would have you believe. We don’t sign up for Survivors. The conditions were absolutely inhumane and had nothing to do with the games.”
In addition, other former contestants claim that the game is rigged. According to them, some influential contestants were shortlisted to proceed to the next rounds of the games regardless of the results obtained in the previous tests. A number of contestants claim to have been eliminated by the show’s producers minutes after crossing the finish line of the test, theoretically securing their passage to the next phase. Others, however, discovered that Netflix had already booked their return flights from London (where the reality show was filmed).) before the games themselves began, proving that their elimination in the tests was planned from the beginning. “It wasn’t really a contest,” recounted one of these anonymous participants. “It was a TV show and we were extras.”