Each kill in a new MrBeast video is worth $5000, and the movie shows him and his companions being tracked down by players driving tanks and aircraft in Grand Theft Auto Online. A major manhunt in GTA Online was launched against YouTuber MrBeast and his friends, with gamers dressed in full military uniforms pursuing them along the street. In addition to his imaginative and expensive antics – many of which are undertaken to benefit charitable organisations such as the Arbor Day Foundation and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital – James Donaldson, aka MrBeast, is well-known on YouTube. His most recent online event was a real-life Netflix TV show Squid Game replica, which garnered more than 91 million views in three days last week after being posted on YouTube.
Mister Beast, who works in the gaming industry, runs online competitions for games such as Minecraft on occasion and even arranged a real-life battle royale competition hosted by Apex Legends publisher EA earlier this year. Before that, Donaldson and his streaming friends held an in-game “manhunt” event in GTA Online were 100 users competed to find down the team’s location throughout Los Santos in exchange for a large sum of money.
MrBeast and company have done it again again, hosting another GTA Online manhunt on the MrBeast Gaming YouTube channel, which can be seen here. It was a much higher stakes game this time around, as the army of opposing players entrusted with tracking down Beast and his team were now armed with military tanks and helicopters, with the goal of either earning $5,000 or receiving a pie in the face if they failed. They were given a four-minute head start in order to hop into a getaway automobile, find a hiding area within the city of Los Santos, and even modify the appearances of their in-game avatars at clothing stores and hair salons. It was open season once the four-minute timer expired, with the GTA Online player army tearing the city apart in an attempt to bring MrBeast and his team down in order to claim the $100,000 reward for themselves and their friends.
It’s hard to imagine MrBeast’s GTA Online challenge resulting in anything other than high-octane antics, such as Jimmy becoming stuck on a rooftop while attackers swarmed in or himself getting involved in a multi-car pile-up while attempting to flee in a cement mixer truck. GTA Online, Rockstar Games’ open-world online sandbox, takes pride in letting players perform a wide range of in-game stunts within its expansive sandbox area, which undoubtedly contributed to the game setting a new player count record in 2020 during the GTA RP boom.
Seeing MrBeast and his friends scrambling to safety before the large GTA Online player army was unleashed and battling to stay alive against the onslaught is as interesting to see as it is to imagine it was for everyone engaged to participate in during the game itself. It’s impossible to predict when MrBeast’s next online gaming challenge will take place or what it will entail, but it will be difficult to top the experience of having a full paramilitary unit competing for a payout in Grand Theft Auto Online.
