After over two years of delivering fun-filled games to the palm of your hands, HQ Trivia closes its doors for good as an acquisition falls through. Today, the company laid off 25 full-time staff and ceases production to its various shows including Trivia, Words, Sports, After Dark, HQX and (former) future shows under development.
HQ Trivia had a deal in the works to get acquired, but the future buyer pulled out yesterday and investors are no longer funding the shows. In a statement to employees attained by CNN Business’ Kerry Flynn, CEO and Co-Founder Rus Yusupov shared the following information:
“We received an offer from an established business to acquire HQ and continue building our vision, had definitive agreements and legal docs, and a projected closing date of tomorrow, and for reasons we are still investigating, they suddenly changed their position and despite our best efforts, we were unable to reach an agreement”
“Unfortunately, our lead investors are no longer willing to fund the company, and so effective today, HQ will cease operations and move to dissolution. All employees and contractors will be terminated as of today.”
Rus Yusupov
With the game launching in October 2017, players could compete against each other in a series of questions to compete for the nightly jackpot. HQ has raised of $15 million, including a Series A led by Founders Fund. At one point it had over 2.3 million concurrent players in a single game.
After some time, the game began to slowly die down, cheaters arose, and the amount of winners became larger leaving those with only a few dollars or cents. Copycats emerged rapidly, and engineering issues led to some problems during games.
After former Co-Founder and CEO Colin Kroll had passed away, production and game development at the company had began to slow down causing more internal problems.
It is very sad to see this company go as I played all of the HQ games daily, and was even testing future shows for the company. From everyone here at Apple TLD, we wish the best upon the team and can’t wait to see what is next. Until next time, HQ.
