Contestants Claim Netflix’s Squid Game Reality Show Was Rigged

Image: Noh Juhan/Netflix

Here’s the good news for Netflix’s upcoming reality show based on the hit Korean thriller Squid Game: unlike the original series, no one involved appears to have been brutally murdered. The bad news, however, is that in addition to reports that her contestants claimed to have suffered intensely during filming, claims are now being made the game wasn’t even fair.

In a lengthy Rolling Stone report, several anonymous gamers said they saw several contestants receive special treatment, as well as others disqualified despite their successful play:

The former players claim that some contestants – several of whom were TikTok and Instagram influencers – appeared to be shortlisted to advance to the next round regardless of the outcome of the first match, and were fully mic while the majority of the eliminated contestants had microphones dummy around the neck. A former player claims the rules were changed to elevate a competitor’s storyline, and another says he saw an eliminated player put back into the game.

“It really wasn’t a game show. It was a TV show and we were basically extras on a TV show,” one says.

Two other contestants say that when the show bought return flights from London to watch filming, the return flights happened to be scheduled for the day after they were eliminated from the show. Two others say some competitors moved during the infamous “Red Light, Green Light” game but weren’t eliminated, and yet another said they saw an eliminated player come back into the game.

It all sounds gruesome, and that’s before more details about the grueling nine-hour experience of playing “Red Light, Green Light” in a freezing airplane hangar are revealed. Of course, the original Squid Games were meant to be gruesome and dangerous, so the reality show recreates them, horribly, accurately…? For more, check out Rolling Stone’s report.

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