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HQ Trivia shuts down after 3 years

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By John Glenday, Reporter

February 17, 2020 | 2 min read

HQ Trivia, a live game-show app which enticed players with cash prizes, has closed its doors with the loss of 25 jobs following the collapse of takeover talks.

HQ Trivia

Game over for HQ Trivia

Confirming its demise in a tweet, chief executive and co-founder Rus Yusupov wrote: “With HQ we showed the world the future of TV. We didn’t get to where we hoped but we did stretch the world’s imagination for what’s possible on our smartphones. Thanks to everyone who helped build this and thanks for playing.”

HQ Trivia began life in August 2017 as the brainchild of Intermedia Labs and drew some 2.3m live viewers at its peak as people scrambled to claim a prize pot which at one point stood at $300k.

Despite the hype around the game, it fell into terminal decline with an install base collapsing from 2m in February 2018 to just 67,000 by January this year. It also struggled to find a sustainable monetisation strategy. It opted to eschew in-app display ads in favor of native advertising deals, which initially drew big brands like Nike and Warner Bros.

The decline of the app was compounded by the loss of popular ‘Quiz Daddy’, aka host Scott Rogowsky, who left last year to front DAZN's baseball show.

HQ Trivia’s travails have not discouraged a series of imitators from striving to find the magic formula for themselves, with MTV UK partnering with Facebook Watch to deliver a live social quiz show called MTV Stax.

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