HQ Trivia Games Secures $7.8m in Seed Round

Internet Game, a remodelling project of a once-popular online game dubbed 'HQ Trivia Meets NFTs", has secured $7.8 million in a seed round. 

Interestingly, the founder of the HQ Trivia that crashed and burned down two years ago is among the investors who injected capital into a similar project. Particularly, this project reinvents HQ Trivia as an Internet Game, a crypto-based twist on the original model.

Cumulatively, the seed funding round enjoyed participation from HQ Trivia co-founder Rus Yusupov, ParaFi Capital, Dragonfly Capital, Delphi Digital, Uniswap Ventures, Collab+Currency, Gmoney, Milk Road, Ready Player DAO, and Zedd, co-founder of Magic Eden. 

HQ Trivia was shut down two years ago after it started its operation in 2018. The firm declared bankruptcy due to its operations' failure due to intense competition. 

In addition, the leadership style adopted by the HQ Trivia game co-founders Colin Kroll and Rus Yusupov was part of the factors which contributed to its closure. Rus Yusupov threatened to fire Scott Rogowsky, his star host at that time. Their issue was over a profile that the Daily Beast had written about Rogowsky.

According to the statement written about Rogowsky, even with HQ Trivia's exponential growth, he can still "order his favourite salad from Sweetgreen" without people interrupting him. This statement created a rift between the star host and the co-founder. Meanwhile, it did not affect the growth of the firm at first.

Secured Funds Focused on Season Two' Bear Market Battle'

For the game, users compete against each other and win real as well as virtual cash prizes. Initially, when the games first launched, its games were hosted twice weekly. While its Trivia holds every Thursday by 9 pm. During all of its time, it gave almost $6 million as cash prizes to winners of its trivia questions. 

The first season began in March when 8,000 players mined $2.2 million worth of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to access the game. NFT prizes, which were voted on by Bored Apes, Mutant Apes, Doodles, Azukis, and CloneXs, were purchased with over $1 million.

Noteworthy is that with this secured fund comes season two of the Internet Game; Bear Market Battle. It will be launched on September 12. Also, between September 12 and September 23, six new games will be held.