Around 1 a.m. EST in the early morning of February 15, the last-ever game of HQ Trivia was played. The hosts, Matt Richards and Anna Roisman, were noticeably bummed out. As had been increasingly common in HQ Trivia, technical difficulties plagued the night, with the audio and video out of sync at the start of the game. The prize pool was just $5; the game’s winners ended up with one cent each. Extra lives were given out to all with the irony that they were completely useless now. The game ended with Roisman drunkenly singing “Memory” from Cats.
It was an unceremonious end for the live game show app that two years ago was attracting 2.4 million players on peak nights and giving away prize pools in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Launching in August 2017, HQ Trivia had an instantly appealing hook: it was a trivia game show performed live every night that anyone could play on their phone, and the winners would get cash prizes. In February 2018, it was the second most downloaded app in the United States.
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With the original host, Scott Rogowsky, it was an extremely fun experience to play HQ Trivia. Even though there were frequent technical problems, it shined above the imitators that soon flooded the App Store. Guest hosts like The Rock, Danny DeVito and Bert from Sesame Street would show up on special occasions. The February 6, 2019 broadcast, done entirely through live animation to promote The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, was even nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Original Interactive Program!
Behind the scenes, however, there were problems from the start. Co-founders Colin Kroll and Rus Yusupov had reputations for unprofessional management from their time at Vine, making the app an unappealing investment for financiers. In November 2017, right when the app was achieving major popularity, Yusporov allegedly threatened to fire Rogowsky over a Daily Beast profile. “Free Scott” became a meme in the HQ chat soon after. Kroll died of a drug overdose on December 16, 2018.
In April 2019, the “Free Scott” meme became a reality. Scott Rogowsky got a new job hosting the show Change Up on the DAZN sports streaming service. He wanted to be able to do the new show on weeknights while still hosting HQ on weekends, but Yusupov wouldn’t allow him to have both jobs, so he left HQ entirely. Matt Richards became the new main host and did a solid job, but the app’s popularity was already in decline.
Attempts to keep the app fresh were a mixed bag at best. On the positive side, HQ kept up some interest by introducing new games: sports and music-themed shows, the Wheel of Fortune-style HQ Words, the photo challenge HQX and raunchy late-night HQ After Dark sessions.
On the negative side, changes to the main game alienated players. Introducing a level-up points system made it easier to win but that meant the winnings were much smaller, especially as the prize pools shrunk and the big sponsored games disappeared. Extending the game’s length to include checkpoint prizes on the way to a final jackpot backfired when the jackpots ended up being impossible to actually win. By the time the app shut down, it was difficult to keep track of what the format even was.
By then, HQ had lost its investors and the company’s future was dependent on a sale going through to a buyer on February 14. The buyer canceled at the last minute, leaving HQ dead. Those looking forward to the weekend’s Destiny’s Child and Austin Powers-themed trivia nights were out of luck, but few were playing the game at that point anyway compared to at its peak.
Like the concurrent rise and fall of MoviePass, HQ Trivia was both a concept too good to be true and, in execution, not quite good enough to be sustainable. At least we got to enjoy it while it lasted. As for the original host, Scott Rogowsky declared victory over the company on Twitter through the use of an Uncut Gems screenshot.