Over the years, Trivia Bliss has extensively covered Etermax’s Trivia Crack and its subsequent spinoff apps. From Trivia Crack 2 to Trivia Crack Adventure and Trivia Crack Explorer. We’ve even discussed the brand’s foray into television with Trivia Quest. In short, there are a lot of options when it comes to getting your virtual trivia fix.
Now, there’s a new Etermax app out there that promises loads of trivia fun alongside—wait for it—real cash prizes. It’s called Trivia Crack Payday, and since it was released in 2021, it’s garnered a good deal of hype.
Trivia Crack Payday is hosted on the Skillz video game competition platform. The app allows users to compete against each other (either one-on-one or in a bracket-type competition) to win small bounties of cash.
To play for cash, users must first make an in-app purchase. This makes sense—put cash in, get cash back—but also sounds like it could be a bit of a scam. What if you purchase cash in the app and never get any back out via a withdrawal? Is gameplay worthwhile? Is it similar to the original Trivia Crack? And, most importantly, can you use Trivia Crack Payday to make money legitimately?
I wanted to put this to the test, so I immersed myself in Trivia Crack Payday for a few days, and let me tell you, it was a mixed bag. I’ll get into the nitty-gritty in the body of the article, but right off the bat, I’ve got to share that this app is addicting. Download at your own risk, because it truly is like crack—once you start playing Trivia Crack Payday, you won’t be able to stop! My momentum especially took off once I put some money into the app—it made it all the easier to wager on my trivia skills, and I was compelled to play game after game.
In this article, I’ll discuss whether Trivia Crack Payday is legit or not and advise you regarding whether or not you should sink money into the app. I’ll also talk about my attempts to win money using the app, how the gameplay works, and how the app differs from the original Trivia Crack. Plus, I’ve included plenty of screenshots of Trivia Crack Payday so you can see for yourself exactly how to use the app. Let’s get into it without further ado: is Trivia Crack Payday legit?
It’s Legit, But It’s Got a Catch or Two
Cat’s out of the bag—Trivia Crack Payday seems pretty legitimate. If you load money into the app, there are fair opportunities to win that cash back and then some. However, there are some considerable drawbacks to trying to make money on this app.
For one thing, it’s pretty slow-going when it comes to earning cash. Each basic cash match requires an entry fee that’s at least half of the final bounty, meaning even if you win all of your matches (and you probably won’t, no matter how much of a trivia whiz you are), it’s going take a while to make more than meager dollars and cents.
Another catch? Trivia Crack Payday is basically just gambling, so you’re leaving whether you make money up to chance every time. If you’re having a fuzzy brain day or you get matched against a few formidable opponents in a row, you might end up losing all of your funds and have to start from scratch by loading more of your own money into the app. It’s a real possibility that you’ll lose all the money you put into Trivia Crack Payday instead of making any back, but if you want to compete, that’s a risk you’ll have to take. Assess your commitment to the competition (and your financial situation) before you find yourself sinking dollar after dollar into the app.
Additionally, depending on which method of playing for cash you prefer, it can be hard even to start up a match. For example, I had difficulty playing in the 1v1 Live Trivia match. I signed up to compete for $3 by putting $1.80 in (and was excited because it felt like a fair bet—not too risky, not too tame) but sadly had to end the match before it was able to begin.
I waited around for Trivia Crack Payday to assign me a match for the 1v1 Live Trivia match, but it ended up being to no avail. From the limited number of profile pictures being cycled through in the magnifying glass icon on my screen, it seemed there weren’t many active users on the app. After about ten minutes of waiting, I got bored and exited the queue. Sure, I could have waited for longer, but it didn’t seem worth my time, especially without the guarantee of actually earning cash. TL;DR, if you want to make money playing live trivia, you’re going to need a lot of time on your hands.
Spoiler alert: I did end up making a little money on Trivia Crack Payday (thank you, thank you, it’s quite the feat, I know). However, I ran into some trouble trying to withdraw it. If you’ve only got a paltry amount of cash, taking it out of the app might not be worth it. If you’re trying to withdraw less than $10, the app charges a $1.50 processing fee (deeply bogus, but what can you do?). At one point early on in my Trivia Crack Payday journey, I tried to withdraw less than $1.50 and was promptly told that the withdrawal amount couldn’t be less than the processing fee.
Additionally, when you withdraw funds, your bonus cash will “be forfeited,” whatever that means. I’d had a promo code when I downloaded the free app for $1 of bonus cash, and I wasn’t ready to give that up quite yet. Eventually, I gave up on trying to withdraw and returned once I’d made some more cash.
By the end of my time playing Trivia Crack Payday, I was able to withdraw a whopping $3.84. That sum was found after subtracting the $1.50 processing fee as well as my 76 cents of remaining bonus cash. Considering that I’d put $5 of real money into the app to start myself off, that wasn’t a very worthwhile withdrawal, but I wanted to make sure it could be done. And it could—but with, you guessed it, another catch. Trivia Crack Payday default withdrawals are delivered via physical checks. That’s right, you have to specify that you want to receive your money back digitally, or otherwise, it will take 4-6 weeks for the check from Skillz to arrive in the mail. Instead, you have to opt for it the money to be refunded to the same method you used to pay in the first place. Since I just finished my trial play of Trivia Crack Payday, I have yet to receive said refund—supposedly, it’s going to take a few days— but I will be back with updates if, for some reason, something goes awry with that. Fingers crossed that I’ll be able to get my money, however little of it there may be!
Now that I’ve talked you through the app’s legitimacy, I’ll give you an idea of how I played Trivia Crack Payday. I started out pretty tame and eventually got into some trivia matches with higher stakes. On the whole, the game was fun, easy to play, and highly addicting. I recommend it to all trivia lovers, though I advise anyone strapped for cash to stick to playing for Z coins (more on that below).
Playing For Z
After setting up my account (the app gave me this hysterical cartoon profile picture and an, um, interesting username…), I began my foray into Trivia Crack Payday by playing for Z coins. I wasn’t quite ready yet to sink money into the app, so I played some practice matches to earn these coins instead of legit money. Z coins are ubiquitous in all competition apps powered by Skillz. They can’t be used outside of the Skillz universe, nor can they be redeemed for actual cash—they’re just a made-up coin used to wager in the app.
To play a practice match in Trivia Crack Payday, you must pay 3 Z coins to compete for 5 Z coins, meaning that you can only make 2 Z coins if you win. You’ll also receive a ticket, which you can redeem for prizes (we’ll get on that later), but still, that’s quite a meager bounty.
I had fun playing these practice rounds as PresentWorkhorse335 (lol). They follow what the app calls a “new strategic mode” that they neglect to define in any further detail—it’s basically like Candy Crush, but with trivia questions. In this mode, you select a category icon in a grid, answer a multiple-choice trivia question from that category (either art, geography, entertainment, history, sports, or science, as always in the Trivia Crack universe), and receive points if you get the question right. Once answered correctly, the icon will burst and explode, allowing a new category icon to slide into its place. Plenty of these icons have powerups, like a lightning bolt, a bomb, or a rocket, which can knock out extra icons and win you more points. If you want to win one of these “new strategic mode” games, your best bet is to try to answer as many powerup questions as possible. It’s a competition, after all, and you want to get the most points!
Competing For Cash
After a few rounds of playing the practice games, I bit the bullet and made a deposit so I could play some games for money. I used a promo code I found online (KASERMAC) to get an extra dollar’s worth of bonus cash to play with. The practice rounds were fun, but I felt ready to try for the real thing.
Many of the cash matches follow the same “new strategic mode” as I described above, so adjusting to this type of gameplay wasn’t hard. It was, however, more of a letdown to know I was losing money every time I lost a game. That said, I won many more matches than I lost, helping me earn back all the money I spent on entry fees. Phew!
I played a couple of cash matches in Blitz Mode instead of the previous method I described. In Blitz Mode, you lose points for every question you get incorrect, so the stakes are higher. There’s also a 45-second time limit on Blitz Mode matches (not including all of the point tallying animations that occur between turns—those eat up quite a lot of time). These aspects make it a riskier choice than the app’s classic, “new, strategic mode.”
Additionally, in Blitz Mode, you only answer questions from three categories instead of choosing between all six for every turn. Two of the categories will be the same for both you and your opponent, while you each get to choose your favorite of the remaining categories to round out the bunch. If you have one category that you totally excel in, it might be worth it to get to select that category while you play.
You’ll answer three basic multiple choice trivia questions from each category, plus a final, bonus question that earns you a trophy. These trophy questions are worth 2500 points each, and they can be what pushes you over the edge if you’re neck and neck with your opponent.
Time matters in Blitz Mode—the longer you take to answer, the fewer points you’ll earn. Since you’re competing for money, time is really of the essence!
For both Blitz Mode and the new, strategic mode, you can play for as little as $1 or as much as $20. However, the entry fees are proportional to how much money you can earn—you’re going to need $12 loaded into the app to get into a $20 match, for example. These options can be handy because they allow you to play to your own personal risk level and not waste a chunk of money if you aren’t feeling at your best.
You can also play for money in a Trivia Battle bracket. Brackets have smaller entry fees and larger payouts—for example, the current featured Trivia Battle costs $3 to enter for a $10 winner’s prize. Additionally, the runner-up receives $4, and the top 4 players get $1.50. This makes it perhaps a more worthwhile game since there’s a greater chance of getting some cash back. Plus, you get to enjoy a few rounds in one game, so your fun won’t be cut short (unless you lose in the first round, in which case, tough luck.).
If you perform well enough in these games, you’ll make it onto the Pro League leaderboard. This is the list of the top-earning players from the most recently played games. There’s a similar leaderboard for those playing practice games. While it takes some practice to do well enough to get a spot on these boards, it’s a fun challenge to attempt!
Earning Free Z, Tickets, and Cash
Trivia Crack Payday makes it incredibly easy to increase your currency count—cash and otherwise—during each and every game. Even if you lose a match, you still receive some benefits, whether it be tickets, Z coins, or both.
And these currencies add up fast! In my first 14 matches, I accumulated over 1700 tickets. Tickets can be redeemed in the Skillz Rewards store for an array of prizes. Some of these prizes are pretty run-of-the-mill—flip-flops for 440,000 tickets, for example—while others are large on an outlandish scale. A bread maker for a little over 7 million tickers? A $20,000 luxury shopping spree for 400 million tickets?! A 2022 Ford F-150 for 2.1 billion tickets?!?!? Clearly, these prizes aren’t always very achievable—like, does anyone actually get enough tickets to redeem them for those highbrow purchases? Knowing how quickly tickets pile up, I see how diehard players might be able to redeem a prize for thousands of them, though having millions or billions of tickets feels like a stretch, no matter how much time a player has on their hands.
Watching these currencies pile up alongside trophies, power-ups, higher tiers, and new levels as you progress throughout the game is fun. Skillz and Etermax have done a good job or providing just enough intrigue by way of special features to keep their players coming back, while still making a profit by charging players almost as much money as they earn while playing.
Other Trivia Crack Payday Features
As we’ve already established, Trivia Crack Playday has plenty of fun features—so many so that I must say I like this app a bit better than the original Trivia Crack! It’s a shocker, I know, so let me explain.
One excellent facet of Trivia Crack Payday that made me like it so much is its lack of bugs. Famously, Trivia Crack is an incredibly buggy app. It’s full of pop-up ads that are notorious for slowing down gameplay and can even make the app crash, ending your games prematurely. But this isn’t the case for Trivia Crack Payday! Instead, it’s incredibly easy and quick to use, with few to no pop-ups. I was pleasantly surprised by how simple it was to get through the game since I’d been expecting the slow response time that’s nearly always present playing classic Trivia Crack. I’d imagine this aspect of the game is different because Trivia Crack Payday is run by sleek and well-powered companies Skillz and Etermax. Additionally, since players are freely putting money into the app to play, there’s less need for pop-up ads, which means the game stays on the speedier side.
While individual game formats differ a bit from the original, Trivia Crack Payday still features the same enjoyable multiple-choice trivia questions you’ve grown to love. Just like the original Trivia Crack, however, some questions are hits, and others are misses. Since many questions are submitted by users, plenty of them has incorrect grammar or even incorrect answers.
Additionally, some questions seem to be placed in the wrong category. For example, the query “what word describes both a dessert and someone who makes shoes?” showed up in the art category for me…? Sure, a cobbler could be considered a type of artist, but that can barely be counted as artsy trivia if you ask me. However, that’s pretty typical in normal Trivia Crack, too, and it didn’t scare me away.
Final Words
With a constant flow of new trophies, tickets, and the opportunity to level up at your fingertips, Trivia Crack Payday makes for an enticing and exciting gaming experience. Though you may not win a ton of cash, it’s still a worthwhile app for its smooth gameplay and simple fun. If you’re feeling like gambling, put a little money into the app for fun and see where it takes you—you just may win big.
Live one on one trivia matches may not be worth your while if you’re using the app at an unpopular hour. Your best bet is to enter into a trivia match that isn’t live so you can play trivia when it’s convenient for you and wait to be matched with an opponent later.
In my opinion, Trivia Crack Payday is more worth your while than the original Trivia Crack. It’s got the same fun, multiple-choice trivia questions you know and love with fewer bugs that slow down gameplay—PLUS, there’s a chance you’ll win some cash, however minimal if you place your bets right and have a little luck. Now, that’s a game I can get behind!
Want to learn more about Trivia Crack? We’ve got a bevy of info about Trivia Crack available for your perusal. You can find out how to play Trivia Crack using your Apple watch, learn about the game’s collectible card feature (as well as how to purchase cards using special gems), and figure out just why the app isn’t working for you. Check out some of our other articles about the beloved app by accessing our Trivia Crack article archives here. Interested in more trivia-related money-making opportunities? Check out our in-depth review of the Trivia Dragon website as well as our full investigative report on The Trivia Bar app.
Enjoy playing Trivia Crack Payday, and remember that we at Trivia Bliss will always be here to provide any new Trivia Crack information and news as it is released. May the trivia odds ever be in your favor!
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