Jimmy Donaldson, better known online as MrBeast, has been YouTube’s brightest star for years. With 308 million subscribers to his main channel, a number that balloons to nearly 460 million when you include his four other channels, he is currently the top-subscribed YouTuber on the platform, popularity that led him to earn an estimated $82 million from June 2022 to June 2023, according to Forbes.
Donaldson, who began his career on YouTube in 2012, has a long history of making entertaining content that accumulates hundreds of millions of views. The videos often feature him testing people’s limits in exchange for a large cash prize. He is also known for his philanthropic work, like paying for cataract surgeries to help 1,000 people regain sight or volunteering in underserved communities.
This level of fame has brought scrutiny and criticism along with wealth and opportunity. Some critics have said that offering vulnerable people cash in exchange for demanding physical or mental challenges is ethically murky. Others have criticized him for using his good deeds as “content” off of which he profits. And in recent months, Donaldson and those in his orbit have been at the center of multiple different controversies. In July, his friend and former collaborator, Ava Kris Tyson, was accused of having inappropriate conversations with minors. In August, a former MrBeast employee accused Tyson of sexually assaulting her. (Tyson has denied all allegations.) Also this summer, some participants in Donaldson’s Amazon competition show Beast Games alleged that they had been subjected to unsafe working conditions. In a separate incident online in late July, old videos of Donaldson making racially insensitive jokes resurfaced, prompting an apology from the YouTuber.
Representatives for Donaldson shared an internal memo, reviewed by TIME, that says they hired a law firm to investigate the allegations made against Tyson. In the internal memo, Donaldson asked for a “full assessment of internal culture” at “Team Beast” and an investigation into the “allegations of inappropriate behavior by people in the company.” The memo also included plans to hire a chief human resources officer, chief financial officer, and general counsel, and implement company-wide sensitivity training.
Here is everything to know about the recent controversies surrounding MrBeast.
Beast Games participants allege unsafe working conditions
In March, it was announced that Donaldson had secured a deal with Amazon MGM to produce a competition show. While the details about the production were sparse, the announcement revealed that 1,000 contestants would be vying for a prize of $5 million—the biggest in television history.
The production began filming in Las Vegas in mid-July, and eliminated contestants later said their experiences did not align with their expectations. In a video obtained by TIME, Donaldson recorded a message to the contestants and revealed that there would actually be 2,000 contestants, not 1,000 as was initially reported. “Obviously, there are 2,000 contestants. I don’t remember if I said that publicly, but there are,” he says in the video. According to the New York Times, contestants ranged from Gen Z to 82.
Participants were told that the first round of eliminations would be for MrBeast’s YouTube channel, and the remaining 1,000 would be competing on the Amazon show. To eliminate the first 1,000 people, the contestants participated in challenges like lifting a large boulder on a pulley system and a game of capture the flag.
Two eliminated contestants tell TIME that the experience they had was less than favorable. Jenae Reidy, who was on set for one day before her team was eliminated, says the production was disorganized, and it was a challenge to get adequate sleep, food, water, and medication. For dinner, “I had gotten a hard-boiled egg, two slices of cucumber, and basically one-third of a stick of celery that was also cut into thirds, two carrot sticks, and a quarter cup of plain oatmeal,” she says. According to Reidy, water was not readily available at the request of the contestants. They were given cans of Liquid Death (a water and iced tea company) and Feastables (MrBeast’s snack brand) and were recorded drinking the water for sponsored content and snacking on the chocolate bars. After the first night, the contestants slept in sleeping bags on the turf in the middle of the stadium.
It was not easy to obtain the medication the contestants provided to production, both Reidy and an anonymous contestant told TIME. They say that staff was disorganized, and the anonymous contestant says they waited for more than two hours to get their medication.
The 2,000 contestants were divided into five teams of 400, and then competed to lift a 10,000-lb. boulder the fastest. They split themselves up into five teams by grabbing colored jerseys that were handed out by guards. A contestant who asked to remain anonymous says that there was such a rush to get colored jerseys for their team that the situation became like a “mosh pit.” “The people behind us were pushing and the people in front of us were trying to turn around and go, so they were squishing us,” the contestant says. “One girl started to have a panic attack, we were trying to keep each other up from falling, people were screaming. It was really crazy.”
The contestant also says that younger men formed alliances with other younger men, creating an unfair advantage against the women and older contestants. According to Reidy and the anonymous contestant who were on the same team, some of their teammates ended up falling and getting caught in the rope. They both say the rope got tangled around someone’s neck. “Production was yelling at the people that were behind the ones that fell to keep pulling, and they didn’t, they stopped,” Reidy says. “They helped get the other people out of the rope, because they didn’t want to hurt them.”
According to the New York Times, more than a dozen people were injured while filming the first portion of the Beast Games show. One contestant told the Times that she left bruised and bleeding, and the publication reports that there were allegedly multiple hospitalizations.
Reidy and the anonymous contestant say that they and others on their team were offered a $1,000 consolation prize after they got eliminated. But the anonymous contestant says they immediately sensed that the offer was fake. Once they made their way to the backstage area, members of the production asked for the money back and told them that they would be receiving their real money later. As of publication, they say they have not received it.
The second part of shooting is set to take place in Vancouver in early August, the New York Times reported. Rumors have been circulating online about potentially dangerous challenges. The YouTuber Rosanna Pansino, who has a lifestyle channel with over 14.5 million subscribers, said in a video on TikTok that film and television production crew union IATSE claimed Donaldson specifically asked that the crew that worked on his show be non-union. She shares an email from an unspecified IATSE branch in Canada that deemed the production an “unfair production.”
“We have no comment on non-IATSE productions,” a representative for the union sent in an email to TIME.
In a statement to the New York Times, a representative for Donaldson says that the production faced issues due to “the CrowdStrike incident [an outage that caused widespread issues across computers using Microsoft Windows], extreme weather and other unexpected logistical and communications issues.” They say the company started a formal review process to “ensure that we learn from this experience.”
TIME reached out to Amazon MGM, the casting company, and YouTube for comment but did not immediately hear back.
A powerful creator with devoted fans
Stories about the alleged unsafe conditions on the Beast Games production gained attention thanks in part to Pansino, who began sharing participants’ experiences on her TikTok in July. In 2021, Pansino took part in a video series for Donaldson called “Creator Games.” The third installment of the series, titled “Extreme $1,000,000 Hide and Seek,” saw 10 of the most popular creators on YouTube come together to play a game of hide-and-seek for a prize of $1,000,000. Pansino, who placed third, claimed that the video was edited to make it seem like she did worse than she really did. Pansino said during an appearance on Trisha Paytas’ podcast Just Trish that she waited to speak out because she did not want to face backlash from MrBeast’s fanbase. When she finally did, she says the fans came for her quickly.
“I received more death threats than I knew how to process… I told him that I would take everything down and apologize to make the death threats stop. I told him I was scared for myself and for my family’s safety,” Pansinso tells TIME. “And after I took everything down, almost all the death threats stopped.”
Pansino says that her YouTube community abandoned her by refusing to call out the most powerful creator on the platform. “No other big creators will speak up about him because they’re worried that they’ll lose their potential of collabs,” she says, pointing to the importance of collaborations between creators. “I think they’re afraid of him as well.” Because she has spoken about her experiences publicly, she says Beast Games contestants felt comfortable sharing their experiences on the production with her.
“A lot of these people who are reaching out feel like they don’t have a voice,” she says. “They’re not large content creators. They’re afraid of Jimmy and his company.”
Pansino says she has a history of entering into collaborations with MrBeast that turned out to be different from what she expected. Recently, she says he told her about a company called Secret Sauce that could post content on her Facebook page by taking control of it. She later found out that Donaldson was part owner of Secret Sauce and never disclosed that to her or his other creator friends who worked with the company. She later found out that Secret Sauce was founded in the Netherlands with another creator named Kwebbelkop, who declined to comment for this story.
Pansino says that soon after working together, the company was shut down, and she and the other creators were not able to access their Facebook accounts for a few months. According to Pansino, Donaldson shut down Secret Sauce because “he secured a deal with Jellysmack, another social media management company, which required him to shut down Secret Sauce.” TIME reached out to Jellysmack for comment but did not immediately hear back. Donaldson’s team declined to comment on Secret Sauce or Pansino’s claims.
Ava Kris Tyson leaves the company after grooming allegations
Last month, Donaldson’s close friend and collaborator Ava Kris Tyson announced she was “leaving all things MrBeast” after she was accused of grooming a minor. The allegation came from a video uploaded by a YouTuber named Prism42, who claimed to have evidence that Tyson had inappropriate conversations with minors on Discord and other social media channels.
Tyson denied the allegations and wrote in a post on X that she didn’t “want these accusations to impact the hundreds of people who work at MrBeast, which is why I have stepped away. I would like to apologize for any of my past behavior or comments if it hurt or offended anyone. It was not my intent. Seeing recent events, we’ve mutually decided it’s best I permanently step away from all things MrBeast and social media to focus on my family and mental health.”
Donaldson quickly addressed the allegations in a post to X that says the company would be launching a “thorough investigation.”
“Over the last few days, I’ve become aware of the serious allegations of Ava Tyson’s behavior online and I am disgusted and opposed to such unacceptable acts. During that time, I have been focused on hiring an independent third party to conduct a thorough investigation to ensure I have all the facts,” he wrote on July 24.
He continued, “That said, I’ve seen enough online and taken immediate action to remove Ava from the company, my channel, and any association with MrBeast. I do not condone or support any of the inappropriate actions. I will allow the independent investigators the necessary time to conduct a comprehensive investigation and will take any further actions based on their findings.”
On Aug. 7, Rolling Stone published an investigation that included accounts from three people, including the one referenced in Prism42’s video, who said they had inappropriate interactions with Tyson. One person interviewed was a former moderator who worked on Tyson’s channel when he was 15. He said Tyson “used me, manipulated me, and did very inappropriate things with me.”
The former moderator shared over 500,000 messages from the Discord channel from between 2017 and 2021 with Rolling Stone. In these messages, the publication reports, Tyson made jokes about her genitals and shared links to pornographic websites. They also reported that she would ask to “purge” chats that were deemed “controversial.” Though Tyson responded to a phone call from the Rolling Stone reporter, she reportedly hung up after two minutes and said she was going to call back but blocked the reporter’s number.
A woman named Jess, who served as Tyson’s executive assistant at Donaldson’s company for a year, also spoke to Rolling Stone. Jess, who is trans, said that Tyson confided in her about Tyson’s own transition, which she then shared publicly in April 2023. In a thread posted on X on July 27, Jess detailed the alleged abuse and said Tyson sexually assaulted her.
“I was a trans girl who had just come out of the closet publicly,” Jess said. “To be reached out to by a celebrity that was in the closet and for them to also tell me that they were transitioning, that created an emotional connection between us, which made it hard to focus on the power dynamic… how famous she was directly influenced how much I liked her.”
Jess said that after she was offered a position as an executive assistant, Tyson invited Jess to live with her. She described engaging in sexual acts with Tyson, saying she felt forced to comply because Tyson was her boss. “I was also thinking if I don’t join her or do something here, then that’s going to make our relationship incredibly strained and awkward, and it felt like I was going to be risking my job if I just did nothing or if I walked away.” Jess eventually decided to leave the company.
She tells TIME through a DM on X that she is shocked that Tyson is being investigated because “as investigations go forward, my experiences have been swept under the rug by creators who want to focus on transphobic narratives.” Jess says that she feels that sharing her story put her in a vulnerable position and feels that more pressure should be put on Donaldson and Tyson to speak out on this matter because “it feels like I’m fighting this fight on my own.”
TIME emailed Tyson and sent direct messages to her on Instagram and X for comment but did not immediately hear back. She has not made any other public statements since leaving the MrBeast company. Now, Tyson is being investigated by a third-party law firm, McGuireWoods LLP, which also did not respond to TIME’s request for comment.
MrBeast’s offensive and racially insensitive language
In late July, Pansino shared old videos of MrBeast making racially insensitive remarks and using a gay slur on X. In the video, he’s responding to a commenter who says they are selling a Black person and MrBeast responds, “The most I would pay is like $300.” He also can be heard saying a slur that is offensive to the LGBTQ+ community.
MrBeast addressed his use of a homophobic slur in a TIME cover story published earlier this year, chalking the mistakes up to youthful ignorance (“I did not even know what [it] meant.”) Representatives for MrBeast shared a statement to TIME expressing a similar sentiment, saying that when he was “a teenager he acted like many kids and used inappropriate language while trying to be funny.”
The statement from a representative continues, “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.”
