Answering correctly banked the remaining money for that question, while answering incorrectly simply banked nothing. At the conclusion of each game was a rather melodramatic moment where the contestant's beneficiary learned that one of their friends or loved ones had won them a (hopefully) large amount of money just for them, since, well, they deserved it.
You Deserve It debuted among controversy, as ABC chose to put it in primetime rather than Million Dollar Mind Game, which the network had put on Sunday afternoons and left to die against NFL games. The run, consisting of six episodes, aired from November 21-December 26, 2011.
This show provides examples of:
- All or Nothing: Averted for the total winnings. Unless a contestant was stupid enough to get all five questions wrong, there was no way to walk away with nothing if you at least knew something. (Which was good, considering the contestants weren't actually playing for themselves.)
- Ascended Extra: Several sideline hosts in the Vietnamese version, such as actress Nguyen Thanh Huong and TV presenter Nguyen Ngoc Thanh Thao, were once celebrity contestants.
- A Day in the Limelight: Nguyen Thanh Van, the most frequent co-host of the Vietnamese version, played as a contestant in Season 8.
- Game-Breaking Bug: An eagle-eyed viewer noticed
that the total amount for the round animates down to $0 after the values are listed, but the amounts taken away each time were the same order the money amounts were placed behind the numbers. - Game Show Host: Chris Harrison.
- Lovely Assistant: Brooke Burns, who served as the show's remote reporter and co-host.
- Luck-Based Mission: The "buying clues" part of the game required knowledge and a little bit of luck. Averted if you notice the Game-Breaking Bug above.
- Melodrama: It's the game show parallel to Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, sans the Product Placement and Ty Pennington.
- Mystery Box: Each round's prize money was divided into nine shares of ascending amounts, hidden behind nine numbered virtual rectangles. To reveal a clue, the player chose a number and hoped it was low-valued, since the revealed amounts were deducted from the round's prize.
- Pilot: In a rare example, it aired... and in a feat only known to be duplicated by ABC's You Don't Know Jack in 2001, it was also the Grand Finale. Differences included putting the numbered boxes on a second screen, the money ladder being $10,000-$25,000-$50,000-$75,000-$100,000, and answering a question wrong resulted in the round being replayed and the top amount removed.
- Shout-Out: A contestant waiting anxiously for an answer on the pilot quipped that it "felt like a rose ceremony."
- Transatlantic Equivalent: Most versions here use the US pilot's presentation style.
- The Spanish version was named Te lo mereces and broadcast on Antena 3 in 2011, as a replacement for their local version of Next One. This version had six rounds with a top prize of €150,000, with its set containing a physical board for the nine money spaces. It only ran for three episodes due to negative reactions from the public.
- The South African half-hour version was sponsored by Unilever OMO and broadcast on e.tv from 2013 to 2014. It had a top prize of R300,000 ($15,670), obtained through three rounds of seven clues each.
- The Vietnamese daytime version, entitled Vì Bạn Xứng Đáng (lit. Because You Deserve It) and broadcast on VTV3 from 2013 to 2022, featured (most of the time) celebrities playing for charity towards less fortunate people in the country. It had a top prize of 100 million VND ($4,171). A new primetime edition premiered in March 2024, now with a new set (which doesn't look as good) and a smaller top prize of 80 million VND ($3,237).
- The Chinese version was called Wèi Nǐ Ér Zhàn (lit. Fight for You) with a top prize of 450,000 yuan ($62,405) was broadcast on CCTV-1 from 2013 to 2014. Unlike all other versions, no free clue was given at the start of each round, which had ten Mystery Boxes (instead of nine), but one of them cost nothing. Hidden in a box in one round was a lifeline called "Golden Clue", which gave the player two options: either continue the round on their own to get the next clue for free, or have a friend in the studio play the round with them.
- Who Wants to Be "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?": From the network that premiered it. Basically a mix of Sale of the Century's Fame Game and Deal or No Deal, emphasising the altruistic aspect much more than gameplay.
