HQ Trivia was a game show app where you could play for free but win real cash prizes. The story of the app is one of a strong start followed by a fairly dramatic crash in popularity. This article will look at why HQ Trivia was so popular and what happened when it started to lose some of this popularity. When HQ Trivia first began it offered prizes of up to $50,000 for each game if all questions were answered correctly. This bought it to the attention of a lot of people and more than 10 million people downloaded the app between January and June 2018. The peak of the apps success was in March 2018 when there were over 2 million people regularly taking part in every game. The app allowed users to take part in an online quiz that was hosted by a live presenter. There were 12 questions in every quiz that got progressively more difficult. Each question was multiple choice with three possible answers to choose from. There was a live chat that took place during each game and comments from the chat were read out by the presenters.
The prize money was one of the first complaints that people had about the app. They felt that it was not made clear enough that the prize money would be shared between every player who answered all the questions correctly. It would be disappointing to win the game and then find out that there were a large number of other winners and so you did not get the jackpot you thought you would. When the game was at its height in the first part of 2018 it had millions of players. However, over time these numbers started to decrease. The game was still popular, but people generally did not seem as obsessed with it as they did in the beginning. It was a game where people would once crowd round at work to cheer on a player who was getting close to the end of the quiz. Over time though, some of the novelty appeared to wear off and people did lose interest.
There had been people who had always been vocal about how the app might struggle to afford to keep on paying so much in prize money. Many people suspected that they would have to start running advertisements within the app and this was something that did eventually happen. According to Ad Age, another way that the app made money was through paid partnerships, including one with Warner Brothers. These partnerships were very profitable for the company, and it helped raise awareness of a number of films that were soon due for release. It was nominated for a Primetime Emmy in the Outstanding Original Interactive Program category for the collaboration with Warner in promoting the Lego 2 Movie.
Whether the app had enough funding became a concern again after the number of active players started to decline. There was a concern about whether they would be able to attract advertising partners if there were fewer people playing the game. The app did take some steps to try and secure their future when popularity did start to wane. However, they did run into some problems when trying to find potential investors. Vox reported that the reputation of one of the founders, Colin Kroll, had made some people think twice about investing. Kroll had a reputation for acting inappropriately around women and there were also reports of bad behavior when he worked at Twitter. He died of a suspected drug overdose in 2018.
The app can still be downloaded but there are no longer any live games that are being played. This also means that there are no opportunities to win any money. If people do not already have the app on their phone, then there seems to be little point in downloading it now. It can also be presumed that the app will no longer be supported during any software updates for the phone you are using.
The nature of most of the start-ups that come out of Silicon Valley means that they need to constantly innovate to keep people interested in their business. It can be argued that this was perhaps something that HQ Trivia did not do. This is a lesson that the owners of the app should take with them on their next project. Rus Yusupov was a co-founder and also had the role of CEO within the company. He was the one that made the announcement to the 25 staff that they would all be losing their jobs.
The final broadcast on the app was presented by Matt Richards and Anna Roisman. The pair has presented many quizzes on the app and were two of the most popular presenters. They both shared their disappointment about the fact that the game had ended. The prize money for the final game was $5 and this was paid for by Matt Richards. There were over 500 winners which means that the prize money was less than a cent per player.
There may be some hope for fans of the game that they will be able to continue playing. Just days after the announcement that the app was closing for good, the CEO Rus Yusupov tweeted that the company may have found a buyer after all. There has been no official confirmation of a new buyer for the app at the time of writing.
There were a lot of positive comments on social media after the announcement about the company being dissolved was made. A lot of people said that they would not even mind if there were no prizes, they would just like to be able to play the game again. This could give potential investors and buyers hope that the app could be made profitable once more. As well as making users of the app happy, a new version could also help to ensure that the employees of the company get the severance pay they are entitled to.
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