The game starts by showing players a countdown timer, which serves as an indication to get ready. Once the countdown reaches zero, all players put their fingers on the screen of their smartphone and try to keep it there for as long as possible.
Players get a point for every second that they keep their finger on the screen. The last player to keep his or her finger on the screen wins. The winner gets $25,000 as a cash prize.
Though Mrbeast has an impressive net worth, he likes and enjoys giving money to people with interesting and viral challenges.
The game was designed in partnership with internet collective MSCHF, which previously launched a popular video game.
It’s available now on iPhone and Android, and it’s been a huge success.
The game has been downloaded over a million times.
Reception
The game received mostly positive reviews from critics and gamers alike. Tom’s Guide called it ‘a weirdly simple, yet addictive app’ and awarded it with 4 out of 5 stars. TechRadar described Finger on the App as an ‘oddly addictive’ game, which is ‘perfect for parties’. Business Insider praised the simplicity of the gameplay and suggested that it may be played when people are bored during meetings or conferences.
Winners
The contest was initially supposed to have a single winner, who would receive $25,000, but after the four finalists remained locked in a fight to keep their fingers on their phones for more than three days, the contest’s sponsor, Donaldson, announced that it had decided to split the prize money among the four remaining contestants.
“Dear the four remaining contestants with your finger still on the app, I’m ending it here,” Donaldson tweeted.
The prize money was then split between four contestants, with each receiving $20,000.
“Three days is insane! You ALL win and will ALL receive $20,000. CONGRATULATIONS!”
At first, when Donaldson asked players to take their fingers off the button, they were reluctant. “I’m not going to lie,” Donaldson told CNNMoney. “I was pretty nervous.” But after he tweeted out the winner’s list with prize money, people started taking their fingers off.
We monitored the times of each entry and a lot of people thought they won. But our backend team verified and called the real winners.
Press the button, win $20,000. Press it again, win another $20,000. It sounds like a get-rich-quick scheme.
On the final day, Donaldson announced he would pay $5,000 to anyone who was willing to take their fingers out of the holes. A couple of people did it — and they got $5,000 each in exchange.
And other players responded and took their fingers off for $10,000.
App Preparation
The mobile app is designed to track over 1 million concurrent users mostly in the first hour. We have a small team of developers and the biggest challenge for our team is scaling up for large spikes in demand.
We’ve had some success using quality Web Services, but we are looking for other solutions too in the future, the app company said.
The game uses a machine-learning algorithm to judge how much skin is exposed in order to determine whether or not what it’s seeing is a human hand. Once it makes that determination, a single finger emerges from the bottom of the screen and begins climbing its way up toward the top. The player must then use their hand to move the finger in a different direction or make it jump over obstacles. If the finger touches anything but the player’s hand, or if the player takes their hand off of the phone, they lose.
Donaldson and his team want to make sure someone couldn’t just duct tape their hand to the phone to keep it going. So they are also developing a way to require players to occasionally move their fingers in specific ways. The idea is that this would be more difficult for people who are trying to cheat than simply holding their finger down on the screen. The App requires players to occasionally move their fingers in specific ways, like drawing a circle or forming a “V” with their index and middle fingers.
“I think the beauty of the game is that we don’t really have control,” Donaldson said. “It’s really up to the people playing and seeing who lasts the longest, and I think our main thing was just keeping the game fair.”