It’s game over for HQ Trivia as it made its last game.
This was once a popular mobile quiz game, but it finally shut down on the 14th of February, leaving behind 25 employees during its closing.
It was reported that the employees received an email from the CEO of HQ, Rus Yusupov, and was thinking that a buyer would take over the business but unfortunately pulled the deal.
The current investors of the company didn’t want to shell out funds anymore for the said business.
The history of HQ is not that long. It started in 2017, the third quarter for iOS, and extended to the Android market in February of 2018.
It was that year when the gaming was at its peak and even made live-streaming two times a day for their customers.
It was giving out cash prizes after every match game to gamers who were able to answer all the questions correctly and completely. The gamemaster at that time was Scott Rogowsky, who was already good at his turf.
HQ Trivia has had 2 million concurrent players at one time during that year, and winners received as much as $400,000 for one game only.
This, in turn, generated the company millions in revue from the game ad deals as big brands advertise with them – Nike, Warner Bros., and other labels. Famous guests would also join the game sometimes, namely Robert De Niro and Dwayne Johnson.
Because of that, it gathered a lot of imitations from different developers. However, the peak time didn’t last that long. Also, in 2018, they started to lose a lot of players, and by the end of the year, Colin Kroll, one of the co-founders, died.
In 2019, HQ tried to launch new apps and games such as HQ Words and HQ Sports. It did some editing on its quizzes and prizes, but then Rogowsky decided to leave the company in 2019. Furthermore, they laid some staff later that year.
Their last game on Friday, known as their farewell game, was a beautiful disaster, as some critics would say.
The host, Matt Richards, yelled, “ Not going to lie. This f@*king sucks. This is the last HQ ever”. From there, the host was cursing and spraying champagne and even threatening to defecate on the troll’s homes and to beg for jobs out there.
The host asked, “Should HQ trivia shut down? No? Yes? Or f*ck no!” together with his co-host, Anna Roisman, they made some cracks during the show such as:
“This $5 prize is coming out of my pocket. We ran out of money. We just kept giving it away. We gave it all to the players, to you, your loyal HQties.”
“Take this time now to buy some extra lives. You never know when you’re going to need them. I wish we had an extra life for the company. I’m sorry. I f*cking can’t. I’m going to cry. My dogs eat $200 worth of food a day. My dogs are going to starve.”
The company paid $6 million in prizes from the $15 million venture capital they had.
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