On Friday, YouTuber Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson cut a massive competition that saw more than 1 million players go head-to-head for a $ 25,000 prize for whoever could keep their finger on the screen of their phone the longest. After more than 70 hours and with the last four contestants showing no signs of giving up, Donaldson abandoned the contest’s initial sole winner model and announced that the four would be leaving with $ 20,000 each.
“Dear the remaining four contestants with your finger still in the app, I am finishing it here. Three days is crazy! ALL of you win and EVERYONE will receive $ 20,000. CONGRATULATIONS!” he tweeted, continuing with a call for the players to “GO TO SLEEP” now.
Designed in collaboration with the MSCHF Internet Collective, Donaldson’s Finger in the app The game launched on June 30, a deceptively simple challenge (be the last to tap the app and win cash) that drew 1.3 million players. Although the prize pool peaked at $ 25,000, its actual amount was originally to be determined by the losing players, with the final prize being the average of everyone’s votes.
In recent days, the competition was so fierce that Donaldson began offering cash to several of the remaining players in exchange for losing them. According to his tweets, two contestants agreed retire Thursday for $ 5,000 a piece, and other two He did the same thing on Friday for $ 10,000 each.
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After calling early in the game, Donaldson tweeted that all four players had been contacted to receive their cash prize. He added that his team had “confirmed the real winners through the backend” after various posts began appearing on social media from people claiming to have been among the finalists and said they had not yet heard from Donaldson about his winnings.
Under the moniker of MrBeast, Donaldson made a name for himself in YouTube in recent years by performing high-profile and often expensive stunts. On his channel, which has 37.8 million subscribers, he has published videos on giving his mother $ 100,000, filling a backyard with 100 million Orbeezand buying and practically giving away every car in a dealership.
In an interview with the edge Before the competition, Donaldson said that his team and MSCHF designed the application to handle “millions of concurrent players” and also incorporated some protections to prevent automated robots from cheating on the system, such as requiring players to periodically move their fingers in a manner Specific The additional precautions seem to have been worth it, since Donaldson tweeted on Friday he was “glad a robot didn’t win.”
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