The Second Coming of MrBeast's 'Finger on the App' Challenge Had Fans Upset

After the first Finger on the App challenge gave one lucky fan the chance to win $25,000, popular YouTuber MrBeast came back with another one. 

This time, the prize was $100,000. 

Just like last time, all contestants had to do was keep a finger on their phone screens for as long as possible. The last person with their finger still on the screen wins the grand prize. 

At the end of the last contest, MrBeast gave the final four contestants $20,000 each. But this time, not everyone was so lucky.

MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, has a whole new app now: Finger on the App 2. And with $100k on the line, tons of people tried to compete, but that also meant that there were tons of issues. 

People took to Twitter saying they were being kicked out of the contest despite their finger still being in place. One tweet said, "Good luck to those who weren’t kicked out of the app for no apparent reason!" Another mentioned that even buying extra lives didn't prevent them from getting booted. 

To participate in the challenge, players need to download the app and hold their finger on their phone for as long as possible.

If a player opens another app or even activates Siri, the app will remove them from the challenge. This means a player's phone is essentially useless for as long as they participate in the challenge.

The first challenge began on June 30, 2020, and reportedly lasted 70 hours. 

"Finger on the App boils down phone use to its minimalist core, and yet, for the hours or even days this contest runs, your phone can provide utterly no utility so long as you play," the app's manifesto reads. "As our attention spans flee, Finger On The App demands utmost devotion to a total absence of distraction: a game where you can’t do anything."

According to MrBeast's Twitter, over a million people participated in the challenge.

Despite the challenge's message conveying just how attached to our phones we are, MrBeast clarified to The Hollywood Reporter that the countless hours we spend on our phones aren't necessarily a bad thing.

"You have so much information at your fingertips, so hopefully, you spend some time learning and researching things that interest you," he told the outlet.

As of this March 22 writing, it's not exactly clear why people were being kicked out of the app and the contest. The issue could be related to just how many people were competing. 

MrBeast tweeted a screenshot of the game saying that 1,252,823 people were competing at once. That could have just been too many people for the app to handle at the same time. That was even an issue last year when he posted on Instagram about the app crashing in December 2020. 

"Hey! “Finger on the app 2” got so many downloads that we crashed the app and tbh, I don’t think we will be able to handle this many players on game day," MrBeast said on the Instagram post's edited caption. "So I’m going to push the date of the challenge back and work on upgrading the servers! It is now on February 19th ... I’m sorry!"

After people spoke up on Twitter about issues with the second challenge, MrBeast tweeted that they were being looked into, but still hasn't been said what exactly caused the app to shut down on so many people. 

"I see lots of you saying you had problems and trust me, we are looking into," he said. "From what I’ve seen so far most are genuinely connection based (if you miss 3 pings you’re kicked) or accidentally touching with a different finger. If we find a glitch though I will share! I sowy."

The BeastGames Twitter account wrote that it's been looking into the issue. 

In a reply to another tweet, it said that "a majority are due to network or touch screen issues to this point." But in a reply to someone on Twitter, BeastGames said it's offering refunds to everyone.

MrBeast doesn't say exactly who won, but in his latest tweets about the challenge on March 21, he said that there were nine people still competing, but if anyone took their fingers off of the app within the next 10 minutes, he'd still give them $10,000. 

In the thread, he said that four people had removed their fingers. BeastGames also tweeted that the game was down to a final three contestants, but a top-five were being considered.

The grand prize of $100,000 isn't MrBeast's largest reward for one of his quirky challenges. In 2019, he held a challenge where participants had to keep their hand on a prize of one million dollars. The last person to remove their hand would win the cash prize.