The HQ Trivia mobile platform has lost investors and a potential buyer after a series of shocks. As a result, the developer of the daily quiz game with real cash prizes closed.
HQ Trivia and its host
On February 15, HQ Trivia laid off its entire staff of 25 people and announced the closure.
According to TechCrunch, the company’s acquisition deal fell through the day before.
“We were offered to buy out the headquarters and continue working, we had agreements and signed legal documents. On February 15, we were supposed to close the deal, but for some reasons that we are still figuring out, the buyer suddenly changed his mind. Despite all our efforts, we were unable to reach a new agreement,” Rus Yusupov, CEO of HQ Trivia, was quoted by the media as saying.
The failure of the deal is only the latest of the company’s misadventures. HQ Trivia has been struggling for a long time with falling revenues and installations of its game show and the scammers operating in it. In addition, the title could not compete with clone games. By the spring of last year, HQ Trivia downloads had dropped by 92% year-on-year. Now monthly installations amount to 67 thousand per month, although at one time they could reach 15 million.
Internal problems worsened when studio co-founder Colin Kroll died. After that, the development of the HQ Trivia product seriously slowed down. Employees started talking about the imminent bankruptcy of the company. Nevertheless, the management kept secret information about how much money HQ Trivia has in the account. At the same time, as TechCrunch reported, the developer allowed himself to spend more than $ 1 million per month.
In February, 20 out of 35 employees of HQ Trivia demanded to remove Yusupov. According to them, he misspent investments, threatened the show’s host Scott Rogowsky and brought the game into decline. Later, employees who signed a petition against Yusupov began to be fired from the company. By July, 20% of the staff had been removed from the company.
In the end, it was abandoned by investors. It should be noted that Founders Fund was actively invested in the company, among others. HQ Trivia managed to raise $15 million. But a series of failures blocked the flow of investments. Obviously, the management hoped to save HQ Trivia from bankruptcy by selling it. After the deal was disrupted, they could only announce the closure.
HQ Trivia is a daily quiz show with a real presenter and cash prizes. It launched in August 2017 and has grown its audience to 2.4 million over the year. The prize fund of the game was $ 2.5-$ 50 thousand.
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