Out of question: HQ pulls the plug on its trivia app

Out of question: HQ pulls the plug on its trivia app

Like one of the players who kept guessing the wrong answer, HQ Trivia has run out of life expectancy.

According to CNN Business, the trivia app, which exploded in popularity in 2018 with daily trivia contests and live prizes, is shutting down.In a letter to employees obtained by CNN Business, CEO Rus Yusupov said HQ's investors were no longer willing to fund the company and that efforts to find a buyer had failed.

The closure of HQ will result in 25 people losing their jobs and the end of daily trivia contests in which thousands of players competed for a share of the prize money. If all 12 questions were answered correctly in a typical HQ trivia game, the prize money was split with all remaining players. Usually the prize was a couple of dollars, sometimes less, but there was a certain thrill in being one of the last participants standing when the 20-minute game was over.

HQ tried to keep things fresh by adding other contests, such as a sports-themed spin-off and the HQ Words game, which resembled an online version of Hangman; in December, HQ rolled out a new game called HQX, which was a "game of chance," with a "game of chance," a "game of chance," and a "game of chance.

The problem was that players who had played HQ regularly during its heyday in 2018 were slowly leaving. I myself played the game fairly regularly for about a year and won the equivalent of a bottle of bourbon at that price. Like other players, however, I lost interest in the HQ habit due to a combination of factors, including the game's infamous glitches, ill-fated attempts to reduce winnings in favor of points, and the natural evolution of fads that simply lose their luster over time.

As of this writing, HQ's Twitter account has not yet acknowledged the closure, but push notifications to current players seem to confirm CNN's report.

Categories