More stories are coming out about Netflix’s Squid Game-themed reality competition gameshow, Squid Game: The Challenge, based on the drama series about poor people literally dying for the exploitative amusement of the super-rich in order to pay off their debts by surviving a last-man-standing Running Man-style series of children’s games.
Rolling Stone ran an article on the brutal conditions behind the scenes at the real-life game show that is quickly proving to be in line with the violently dramatic series that inspired it.
Word coming out from the Squid Game: The Challenge set is one of brutal conditions and rigged games in which contestants are already being injured in an attempt to live up to the hideous spectacle of the dramatic series that inspired it. Just be grateful Netflix hasn’t financed their own Okja-themed food trucks.
Pitting 456 contestants against each other to try to win $4.56 million dollars, the largest cash prize ever given away by any gameshow—which is quite the brag until contestants start having to be hospitalized for freezing—the series is an attempt to feed the gruesome curiosity of the same type of people who watched the show Squid Game and then threw Squid Game-themed parties. One contestant called the show a horse race, and a fixed one at that, and stated Netflix treated the contestants like the horses. Another had this to say: “All the torment and trauma we experienced wasn’t due to the game or the rigor of the game. It was the incompetencies of scale — they bit off more than they could chew.”
The streamer, which is spending all its time worrying about password sharing, only issued the same statement it made before regarding those injured during the freezing-cold rendition of the show’s red light green light game. Rolling Stone reported that the game itself also seemed to be rigged to the contestants, something news media only too happy to go with the studio’s version of events ignored altogether. Saying the series is more of a reality show than a game one—as in the producers have their chosen favorites and are letting them cross the finish lines and survive longer than the horde of others—it’s the type of production mindset that puts the show right in line with the series that inspired it.
Squid Game is streaming now.
Source: Rolling Stone