HQ Trivia, the Once-Popular Mobile Game, Is Shutting Down (cnn.com) 19
CNN Business has learned that the once-popular live mobile trivia game "HQ Trivia" is shutting down. From the report: When HQ launched in 2017, its first game HQ Trivia quickly attracted millions of people across the world who stopped whatever they were doing twice a day to play the game on their smartphones. The company was profiled by The New York Times and its original host Scott Rogowsky became a household name, appearing on programs like NBC's "Today" show. But over the next year, the game's popularity faded and its parent company was hit with a series of setbacks. The company grappled with internal turmoil, including the death of HQ cofounder Colin Kroll, who died in December 2018 from a drug overdose.
CEO Rus Yusupov said in a company-wide email on Friday that "lead investors are no longer willing to fund the company, and so effective today, HQ will cease operations and move to dissolution." In the email, which was obtained by CNN Business, Yusupov also disclosed that the company had hired a banker "to help find additional investors and partners to support the expansion of the company." He said the company had "received an offer from an established business" and was expected to close the deal on Saturday, but the potential acquisition fell through.
CEO Rus Yusupov said in a company-wide email on Friday that "lead investors are no longer willing to fund the company, and so effective today, HQ will cease operations and move to dissolution." In the email, which was obtained by CNN Business, Yusupov also disclosed that the company had hired a banker "to help find additional investors and partners to support the expansion of the company." He said the company had "received an offer from an established business" and was expected to close the deal on Saturday, but the potential acquisition fell through.
You could see that coming, but it was great (Score:2)
It was pretty fun for a while I have to say, a really interesting idea and a great use of tall-form video.
But anything without the original host Scott just wasn't as great, and a format like that can only hold interest for so long - to be honest I am really surprised it lasted as long as it did, and worked as well as it did even with all of the glitches they had. They must have had such a massive initial scale problem...
I'll bet someone got a ton of great technical insight out of that platform that will be
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It was fun while it lasted (Score:2)
It was an interesting concept to have a live gameshow on your phone. I hope someone else runs with the idea and takes it to the next level, whatever that may be. Perhaps VR?
How does that happen? (Score:2, Flamebait)
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They hire 1000 people and make the majority of the managers who produce absolutely nothing.
Um, how did they make money? (Score:2)
HQ gave out cash prizes (sometimes as many as $500,000 in a day) and had a live multicast feed. That's how it ran out of money. It wasn't addictive in that you played one quiz (later 3 quizes) a day, and you could only use 3 extra lives a quiz. So they couldn't have whales.
It was a pretty impressive technical feat, multicasting video and playing a time-sensitive game with sub-second accuracy and millions of concurrent players.
But yeah, just cause it was on a phone, there's nothing interesting about it.
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They had to SPEND money to make a live show twice a day.
From a buisness perspective, this wasn't an app company where you develop once and then only have to pay some AWS fees. The business model was rather that of a micro TV-station
News for grannies, stuff that wastes you time? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, who cares?
A generic mobile game shutting down is literally equivalent to a bag of rice in China tipping over.
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This was hardly a generic mobile game. This was actual interactive TV. If you were around in the 1990s, chances are you remember the hype around this, and then it eventually was forgotten.. I never heard of "HQ Trivia" until now, and I am surprised at how popular it this was. My mind is a little blown, almost like I am looking into a parallel universe where interactive TV became a big thing,
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It wasn't a generic mobile game. It was pretty much a game show app that actually awarded real money ($10,000 split among all the winners). You watched plenty of ads to pay for it, of course, but it was exciting and everyone had a chance at it.
And it was actually real - not a scam, which is rare for a mobile app that was free and gave away real money.
The first few months, it was great - it
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"But then cheater networks started up - basically you had a bunch of people who answered questions, a bunch of people who looked up the answers and spread the answer out over private Discord servers and such. The issue was that the winners per game jumped from a handful to thousands practically overnight because of this, and thus the payouts went from hundreds to thousands of dollars to basically dollars and cents. People who played the game were basically getting practically nothing because of the cheater
Interactive TV (Score:2)
Interesting, this was the exact kind of "interactive TV" that was being hyped as the future during the early/mid 1990s.
Comment (Score:2)
dating (Score:1)
Very annoying game. (Score:2)
I installed it way back when, played it about twice, and then deleted the app from my phone.
Just give me the dang questions and let me answer them. Don't make me watch an insufferably annoying "personality" going on and on inanely for several minutes between each question.
Given it's been a few years, I may have forgotten some details, but as I recall, it was a once-a-day game, and the time was such that people who have a job in the Pacific time zone were pretty much excluded. They did have occasional "spe