Fans of HQ Trivia had to say goodbye to the live-streamed trivia app when the company behind it shut down on February 14. Now, a month and a half later, HQ Trivia is back from the dead and ready for its next chapter.
HQ Trivia launched in 2017 and gained viral popularity in the following months, topping the charts in Apple’s App Store and ranking as Time magazine’s No. 1 app for 2017.
The app’s success had a lot to do with its exciting and addictive nature. Players across the world would participate in live-streamed trivia game shows, where the questions would get increasingly harder each round. Get a question wrong and you’d be knocked out, but stay in long enough and you’d be able to win real cash prizes.
The app remained popular in 2018, but interest dwindled as time went on. Then, in February of 2020, HQ Trivia’s co-founder Rus Yusupov revealed on Twitter that the company ran out of money after a failed acquisition. In that Twitter thread, Yusupov also said that he was working on securing another buyer for his company and remained hopeful. A month later and it seems like his work paid off.
HQ Trivia hosted its first game show since it shutdown on Sunday, March 29. To celebrate, the company also donated $100,000 to World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit bringing food to the populations that need it most. HQ is hosting another game at 9 p.m. ET on March 30, this time with a prize and matching donation of $2,500.
With NYC and numerous other parts of the world currently in quarantine, perhaps this is the perfect time for HQ Trivia to relaunch. HQ’s game shows brought thousands of people together through a remote shared experience, and that may be exactly what people need right now. Plus, the cash prizes are a nice incentive too.
