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HQ Trivia Makes A Comeback With Unnamed Investors

HQ Trivia Makes A Comeback With Unnamed Investors

By Daniel Golightly
March 30, 2020

Intermedia Labs’ HQ – Trivia & Words has officially made a comeback. That’s following a couple of recently reported tweets over the weekend from Matt Richards and co-founder Rus Yusupov. In fact, the trivia and virtual game show app ran its first game on Sunday, starting at 9 pm ET. But sources close to the company indicate that there will be more games in the future.

HQ Trivia, as its branding suggests, is an app that allows users to compete in relatively massive trivia showdowns with others. Launched out of beta on Android in December 2018, the competitions allow users to net real money in return for quick and accurate responses. Prior to the brief hiatus, those were run on a daily basis at select times, taking the format of a live streaming game show.

The revival comes after development on the app was halted and the company effectively shut down on February 14. That was the result of a number of problems ranging from difficulties maintaining fair play to money problems and the death of co-founder Colin Kroll in the same month it left beta.

HQ Trivia & Words was resurrected but who’s behind that?

Now, co-founder Rus Yusupov had previously hinted that the game might make a return as recently as late February. At the time, negotiations were underway with an investor to effectively buy out the company.

Stipulations of those negotiations included assurances that HQ’s 25 employees, laid off as part of the shutdown, received severance pay. Players who had still not cashed out on in-app winnings also needed to be paid out for the deal to work out. It’s not immediately clear whether that deal ever came to fruition, however. The investor responsible for saving the app and the company has not officially been revealed.

Instead, Mr. Yusupov has reportedly said that HQ has a “new home” and that it’s going through changes. Those include changes that will make sure expenses, including payouts, are covered. But also that the experience should become less “buggy” over time.

The tweet from Matt Richards, conversely, notes that players who download the app can now cash out their winnings. That includes users who had played the game and won but had not cashed out before the shutdown.

When are more games coming?

HQ has kept mum about precisely when fans of the app can expect more games too. As noted above, the company is promising a return to form, complete with regularly scheduled games for app users to take part in. The details of those games are still being kept under wraps for the time being.

Future sessions will undoubtedly be revealed in-app sooner than later.

For now, the only new addition to the app aside from Sunday’s game is a health and safety app. That’s hardly surprising. Given the current widespread rollout of sheltering and stay-at-home guidance and policies, now is absolutely the best time to dig into new apps and games. And HQ Trivia easily among the best around.