Skip to main content

HQ Trivia shuts down, leaving us with more questions than answers

Bad news for quiz lovers everywhere: HQ Trivia, the live mobile trivia game, is shutting down and laying off its remaining 25 full-time employees, according to CNN. On Friday, users were scrambling to claim leftover prize money — and facing error messages when they try to cash out. 

The app launched in 2017 and gained a massive following the next year by summoning users twice a day for 15-minute video segments and the chance to win cash prizes by correctly answering questions. Paired with an eccentric comedic host, Scott Rogowsky, the addictive trivia game easily topped the App Store charts. 

Recommended Videos

However, the company’s internal troubles made headlines just one year after it launched. Complaints of delayed payouts, plus an explosive CEO shuffle, made its millions of once die-hard users quickly drop off. (Co-founders Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll also founded 6-second streaming platform Vine. Kroll died of an overdose in December 2018.) One of HQ Trivia’s more notable public relation nightmares came after controversial entrepreneur Peter Thiel was revealed as a financial backer

HQ trivia app Apple
Image used with permission by copyright holder

In a company-wide email, obtained by CNN, Yusupov said “lead investors are no longer willing to fund the company, and so effective today, HQ will cease operations and move to dissolution.”

HQ CEO Rus Yusupov just sent a note to staffers (25 full-time employees): "This is one of the hardest things to do in my life, and I'm really sorry for any disruption this may cause you and our players." https://t.co/xmVWdVIFv7 pic.twitter.com/MOWfs434m1

— Kerry Flynn 🐶 (@kerrymflynn) February 14, 2020

At the beginning of 2019, HQ Trivia announced it received $10 million in ad revenue. Sponsorships with General Motors, Nike, and Warner Bros. followed. 

But later that same year, in July, it laid off 20% of its staff, leading other employees to walk out, too. Reports of “low morale” and cash shortages made HQ Trivia shift its business model to include more in-app purchases. As users became increasingly uninterested in the game, revenues began to decline, and executives started looking to develop other gaming apps, like HQX, to retain viewer attention. 

Ultimately, all efforts failed despite Yusupov’s incentive to “find additional investors and partners to support the expansion of the company,” according to CNN. 

After learning the news, some social media users wondered if they would still be able to receive payouts from past winnings. A few tried to cash out their earnings using the app and ran into error messages.

Hey @hqtrivia sorry y’all are shut down now but does this mean I can’t cash out my last winnings?? Just tried for the last few minutes and no luck. Bummed to see that Mighty Ducks knowledge and @hqwords prowess will be lost to the ether without my cash prize pic.twitter.com/pBFDyRVEys

— supercommonname (@supercommonname) February 15, 2020

It’s just over?? What about the prize money we accrued?

— Melissa Barngrover (@MelissaB425) February 14, 2020

When Jean Henegan tried to cash out Friday afternoon, she was faced with an error message.

“I’m stuck with $13.85 [and] I can’t cash out,” Henegan told Digital Trends. “I got notifications over the last two days about cashing out, but assumed it would be fine.”

Henegan added she never received a notification about cashing out before.

HQ Trivia did not immediately return request for comment from Digital Trends on whether players will still awarded the cash prizes they accrued in the game.

At its peak, HQ Trivia had 15 million all-time installations. This past month, it only had 67,000, according to a spokesperson from Sensor Tower.

At least it will be remembered as a great way to make it to 3 p.m. on a weekday. 

Meira Gebel
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Meira Gebel is a freelance reporter based in Portland. She writes about tech, social media, and internet culture for Digital…
Google just gave vision to AI, but it’s still not available for everyone
Gemini Live App on the Galaxy S25 Ultra broadcast to a TV showing the Gemini app with the camera feature open

Google has just officially announced the roll out of a powerful Gemini AI feature that means the intelligence can now see.

This started in March as Google began to show off Gemini Live, but it's now become more widely available.

Read more
This modular Pebble and Apple Watch underdog just smashed funding goals
UNA Watch

Both the Pebble Watch and Apple Watch are due some fierce competition as a new modular brand, UNA, is gaining some serous backing and excitement.

The UNA Watch is the creation of a Scottish company that wants to give everyone modular control of smartwatch upgrades and repairs.

Read more
Tesla, Warner Bros. dodge some claims in ‘Blade Runner 2049’ lawsuit, copyright battle continues
Tesla Cybercab at night

Tesla and Warner Bros. scored a partial legal victory as a federal judge dismissed several claims in a lawsuit filed by Alcon Entertainment, a production company behind the 2017 sci-fi movie Blade Runner 2049, Reuters reports.
The lawsuit accused the two companies of using imagery from the film to promote Tesla’s autonomous Cybercab vehicle at an event hosted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk at Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Studios in Hollywood in October of last year.
U.S. District Judge George Wu indicated he was inclined to dismiss Alcon’s allegations that Tesla and Warner Bros. violated trademark law, according to Reuters. Specifically, the judge said Musk only referenced the original Blade Runner movie at the event, and noted that Tesla and Alcon are not competitors.
"Tesla and Musk are looking to sell cars," Reuters quoted Wu as saying. "Plaintiff is plainly not in that line of business."
Wu also dismissed most of Alcon's claims against Warner Bros., the distributor of the Blade Runner franchise.
However, the judge allowed Alcon to continue its copyright infringement claims against Tesla for its alleged use of AI-generated images mimicking scenes from Blade Runner 2049 without permission.
Alcan says that just hours before the Cybercab event, it had turned down a request from Tesla and WBD to use “an icononic still image” from the movie.
In the lawsuit, Alcon explained its decision by saying that “any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account.”
Alcon further said it did not want Blade Runner 2049 “to be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company, for all of these reasons.”
But according to Alcon, Tesla went ahead with feeding images from Blade Runner 2049 into an AI image generator to yield a still image that appeared on screen for 10 seconds during the Cybercab event. With the image featured in the background, Musk directly referenced Blade Runner.
Alcon also said that Musk’s reference to Blade Runner 2049 was not a coincidence as the movie features a “strikingly designed, artificially intelligent, fully autonomous car.”

Read more