The rise and fall of HQ is rather intriguing. As mentioned up the thread, HQ Trivia UK was pulled suddenly at the start of December - it'd been messed around quite a bit, with its 3pm games (the ones that had brought it attention in the first place because whole offices were downing tools to play) scrapped without warning a couple of months beforehand and the jackpots cut. Reading between the lines, I think the presenters were messed around too; it was them who ended up telling players that HQ UK had been canned.
Of the two main HQ UK presenters, Sharon Carpenter had already worked in the US and on the US version, but they had quite a breakout star in Beric Livingstone - hopefully this will lead to bigger and better things for him. As mentioned already, there was also Sian Welby of Heart, and Kathryn Goldsmith who then went to QVC. I'm just pleased I managed to win a whole seven quid out of it before it was pulled.
The US version has suffered from falling user numbers, a story sadly compounded by HQ's founder managing to cancel himself rather abruptly before Christmas:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47136687
The whole thing just seemed a bit of shambles behind the scenes, the usual story of a venture-capital fuelled app hoovering up huge piles of money without the first clue of how it was actually meant to make money. The US version made some money through paid guest appearances (this happened a few times in the UK), sponsorship and TV-style spot ads in the pre-game countdown, but the UK version seemed to rely on people paying for extra lives (the cost of which rocketed shortly before closure).
One of the publicity interviews for HQ UK implied it was made out of New York City, but that doesn't seem right.
I expect News UK can subsidise Q Live until it can wash its face, but I wouldn't be surprised to see HQ fade away in the coming months.