You’re probably reading this because, at some point, you’ve attempted to play Trivia Crack offline to no avail. We’re here to tell you why that’s sadly not a possibility. Unfortunately, due to the game’s structure, it must have data or WiFi to work. But before we launch into it, here’s some background.
Since its release in 2013, Trivia Crack has become one of the biggest and most successful trivia apps out there. It is made by Etermax, a prominent gaming app company that also owns the Word Crack franchise. Etermax more recently came out with a second edition of the game—aptly called Trivia Crack 2—with new features and unique modes that are different from the original app.
Both apps have had their ups and downs but they’ve both generally been quite popular and have received glowing reviews from users. Trivia Crack has a 4.7/5 star rating on the Apple App Store, and Trivia Crack 2 isn’t far behind it with a 4.6/5 star rating.
We at Trivia Bliss have covered Trivia Crack extensively, from background on the game’s kooky characters to whether or not it’s safe for the whole family to play and whether or not the app is now past its prime. But we have yet to explain why the iconic trivia competition app can’t be accessed online. Read on to learn more about why this beloved game needs WiFi or data to function. Let’s get to it!
What is Trivia Crack?
If you’re brand new to Trivia Crack and don’t know what it is, it’s basically a multiplayer trivia competition app. It is marketed as a game to play against either your close friends or your enemies—really, against anyone who you’d like to best in a trivia match.
You can play Trivia Crack in one of several modes, including Classic Mode, Survival Mode, and Triviathon. Each of these modes has its own unique features, and they’re all of different intensity or seriousness from the others, so test them all out to figure out which one is your favorite before you get in too deep.
Even if you’re not a huge trivia buff, Trivia Crack can be a really fun game to play. If you need some extra help, you can earn or purchase power-ups to get you through a round. These power-ups really come in handy if you fail to answer a question correctly or want to eliminate incorrect answers from a question’s multiple-choice answer bank.
Personally, I love Trivia Crack—it’s the only gaming app I have on my phone. I first downloaded it in the fall of 2013 just after the app was released, and I’ve enjoyed playing it ever since. There’s a huge variety of trivia questions used in the game, and they’re drawn from plenty of different categories. Art, entertainment, sports, science, geography, and history are the standard categories used in everyday gameplay.
I enjoy playing the game against my real-life friends. However, you can also play Trivia Crack against total strangers that the app connects you with at random. It’s fun to meet new people who are big trivia fans but be sure to be careful with strangers—Trivia Crack’s original edition has a chat feature that can make connection with randos a little hairy. In other words, maybe only allow your kid to play against friends they know in real life, or prevent them from downloading the app until they’re a little older.
Sure, Trivia Crack has ads, which get a little old after a while, and gameplay can be relatively slow, but it’s still a fun app on which to pass the time. Additionally, you’ll never run out of trivia questions to answer while you play, which is a big part of Trivia Crack’s charm and appeal.
What Happens If You Try to Play Trivia Crack Offline?
Are you reading this article because you’d like to attempt to play Trivia Crack offline very soon? Perhaps you’re about to get on a plane, or you’ve got an unstable WiFi source. Maybe you’re almost out of data for the month and you’re trying to make your data plan last.
Unfortunately, in all of these situations, you’re out of luck if you want to get through a game of Trivia Crack. As soon as your source of WiFi or data is cut off, the game becomes unavailable to play. It’s a huge bummer that’s plagued many users throughout the years, but so far, no one has found a way to make Trivia Crack’s gameplay work offline.
No matter what, the game stops once your WiFi or data source is cut off from the app itself. To give you an idea, this is the error screen that pops up when I try to play on airplane mode:
Lo and behold, I tried my best to access the game without WiFi or data, and it immediately stopped loading. Boo!
There’s no way to resume gameplay unless you turn WiFi back on or enable your data. If you don’t do one or both of those things, you’re out of luck and can’t continue. That gives your opponent a greater chance of surpassing you in a match—and you don’t want that, right? Therefore, it’s best to stick to playing solely when you know your WiFi is reliable or you have enough data to get through the game.
We know—it’s a big disappointment that there isn’t a way around this. Consider getting in contact with Etermax to try and create a solution to this problem. Perhaps if enough users complain, they’ll begin developing a new version of the game that can be used offline.
Why Can’t You Play Trivia Crack Offline?
Ok, so now what? We’re all aware that Trivia Crack can’t be played offline, but why is that the case? Doesn’t this seem like an issue that should have been solved long ago? For better or for worse, it’s not so simple.
Too Many Questions and Too Many Ads
Part of Trivia Crack’s appeal is centered around its long and meandering gameplay. If you play Trivia Crack in classic mode, one game can last for up to twenty-five rounds. That’s a whole lot of questions!
In fact, Trivia Crack has so many questions that you need a WiFi or data source for them to load. Do you think your phone has enough room to download all those questions onto it ahead of playing? Absolutely not!
Trivia Crack is a massive game whose database of trivia questions spans every corner of conceivable (and appropriate!) knowledge. It would simply take up way too much space if it couldn’t draw upon data to display its questions.
And if you’re a big Trivia Crack fan, you know that Trivia Crack’s questions almost never repeat. Since its questions are always unique—they’re from different categories with many varied topics—it makes a lot of sense that one’s phone wouldn’t have enough room for them all.
Additionally, Trivia Crack is—controversially—known for its enormous amounts of in-app advertisements. An ad will pop up after every round of the game. If you get a question wrong, you’ll receive an option to watch a video advertising a product, and in return, you’ll earn your turn back from your opponent. The game has made sure to incentivize watching ads, and they’ve done a good job of it, even if this has alienated some users in the process.
This wasn’t always the case. When Trivia Crack was first created, its ads were more intermittent. However, once its parent company, Etermax, saw the potential for a profit, the number of ads featured during gameplay increased exponentially.
Many users disliked the sheer quantity of ads present in the original Trivia Crack, and Etermax took that criticism to heart while creating Trivia Crack 2. Though the app has fewer ads than its predecessor, it still has quite a few of them—they just don’t pop up after every single question. While they may be less obtrusive, pop-up and video ads are still very much present in Trivia Crack 2.
Ads need data or WiFi to load, and goodness knows that Trivia Crack—and Etermax as a whole, by extension—no longer exists without copious amounts of ads. That’s how they make much of their money, after all. We understand why they’re needed for the app to run, even if they’re not our favorite things to watch. That said since the app couldn’t survive without ads, it definitely couldn’t survive offline—the Trivia Crack franchise would miss out on quite a profit if they tried.
There is a version of Trivia Crack with no ads. However, this ad-free version costs $6.99 to purchase for use. Additionally, this version is still not available offline due to its extremely large question library. You may evade the annoying ads, but you’re out of luck if you want to save your data.
To put it simply, the scope of Trivia Crack is too vast to be able to be accessed without data. In fact, we don’t recommend even using Trivia Crack without WiFi—the game will drain your data plan super quickly due to its large quantity of ads and questions. However, if you have unlimited data, you’re safe to play for as long as you like.
Why All the Ads?
We mentioned earlier that Trivia Crack has been able to survive as a successful app for so long due to its ads. These ads infiltrate almost every part of the game, which can be very distracting for users. Does Trivia Crack really need all that ad money that badly?
Well, they just might. Most agree that Trivia Crack is past its heyday. Here’s some background for you.
Trivia Crack was created in 2013, and it was released to the public that October. The game became an instant hit, and steadily rose in downloads. In 2015, the game was number one on the Apple App Store for 60 whole days. That means that, for that nearly two-month duration, it was downloaded more than every other app, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Angry Birds, etc. Etermax CEO stated that, during this time, the app was used by 20 million individual users on the daily. That’s a huge population of trivia fans right there!
However, the app’s downloads died down quite a bit after 2015. Maybe the game’s popularity was waning because people had had their fill of ads, which were featured increasingly shortly after the app became extremely popular.
Still, Trivia Crack has had over 600 million downloads in total across the globe. Though the ads must deter some users, clearly Trivia Crack has plenty of loyal folks coming back to play again and again anyway. No one likes watching ads—especially because they are a large part of why Trivia Crack can’t be played offline—but they’re an everyday aspect of almost any app out there these days.
Final Words
We hope you enjoyed our overview of why Trivia Crack is unavailable offline, and that it helped to shed a light on an issue that has plagued both casual players and big-time trivia fanatics alike. We can only hope that, as the game continues to grow, change, and evolve, Etermax will come up with an offline version of Trivia Crack. Its questions might not span to every corner of human knowledge, but it would certainly appease many loyal Trivia Crack users.
Have you ever tried to play Trivia Crack offline to no avail? Maybe you’ve got some complaints about the app, or some helpful tips for other players. No matter what you’ve got to say about Trivia Crack, we’d like to hear it, so let us know down below in the comments.
Leave a Reply