Season 49 of Survivor hadn’t even started when chaos broke out behind the scenes. Host Jeff Probst just revealed the surprising reason two players were removed right before the cameras started rolling.

“In the days leading up to the beginning of the game, all the players are together,” Probst shared on the September 24 episode of his “On Fire with Jeff Probst” podcast. “They’re at a place we call Ponderosa. So you have all of your competitors, but you’re not allowed to talk.”

Of course, as Probst explained, the rules are strict for a reason. “That’s why we have so many handlers there to make sure nobody’s talking,” he continued. “You can obviously look at each other, you can try to make eye contact. That might work for you, it might not.”

While castaways can jot down their early “assessments” of competitors, actual conversation is completely forbidden. “The only thing is, we have rules,” Probst emphasized. “The rules are you cannot talk to each other, for obvious reasons. And in this season, season 49, we had two players who were disrespecting that rule. They just kept talking.”

According to the Emmy-winning host, the situation escalated quickly. Probst said he received a call noting “a level of concern” over the contestants’ behavior, prompting producers to give the pair a “stern warning.”

But things only got worse. “I went and met with our executive team and said, ‘Look, we might have a situation,'” Probst recalled. “Before we could even finish our discussion, I got a second phone call saying that the level of disrespect had reached an even more blatant level.”

At that point, there was no turning back. “That was all it took,” he revealed. “Candidly, the decision was made in that moment to immediately remove those two players from the game and replace them with our alternates.”

The sudden shakeup brought in Jason Treul and Michelle “MC” Chukwujekwu as replacements — a twist that, surprisingly, the rest of the cast supported.

“What really happened was the players, once they were able to talk, they thanked our producers,” Probst shared. “Because they said, ‘We were all aware that this was happening. And it felt like cheating. Like there was an advantage being had.’ And now they’re in the situation of: Should I do that as well?”

Though unprecedented, Probst made it clear that the move was necessary. “It should be clear to future players, although I doubt this will ever happen again, to just know we will not hesitate to pull you from the game,” he warned. “It doesn’t matter how much time or money we’ve invested in you.”

As he put it best: “We value the integrity of the game more than anything.”