A piece of interesting news coming your way as HQ Trivia made a name for itself with live trivia games. This not only offers real cash prizes but over the past year, interest in the application has declined dramatically. Now, the company has announced that it will close and cease all operations.
First reported by TechCrunch and CNN Business, HQ Trivia had an agreement to be acquired, but the buyer withdrew at the last moment. Existing investors were no longer willing to finance the game, which forced the closure.
Furthermore, CEO and co-founder Rus Yusupov explained the situation in an email to all HQ Trivia employees. We received an offer from a business established to acquire HQ and continue to build our vision, we had final agreements and legal documents, and a planned closing date for tomorrow, and for reasons we are still investigating, they suddenly changed their position and, despite our best efforts, we could not reach an agreement. Unfortunately, our main investors are no longer willing to finance the company, and so effective today, HQ will stop operating and go into dissolution. All employees and contractors will be laid off as of today.
While the HQ Trivia had raised more than $ 15 million and reached its peak of popularity with more than 2.3 million concurrent players and more than 15 million installations. Within the company, however, there was resentment against Yusupov. More than half of the startup staff signed a petition to force Yusupov to leave the company in April last year.
With the decrease in downloads and the disappearance of brand associations, not to mention the expulsion of popular host Scott Rogowsky, HQ Trivia could not maintain the momentum it had accumulated in its launch. The live trivia games on your iPhone, combined with real cash prizes, are certainly a compelling premise, but the commercial aspect of things was apparently not there. Yusupov wrote the following on Twitter after news of the HQ closure was known:
“With HQ we show the world the future of television. We did not get where we expected, but we extended the imagination of the world to what is possible on our smartphones. Thanks to everyone who helped build this and thanks for playing.” We hope to see some updates from HQ Trivia for betterment.
