Samantha Bee’s Trivia App Clocks 50,000 Downloads in 24 Hours, Struggles Under Load

By Janko Roettgers

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – Samantha Bee’s new HQ Trivia-like app “This Is Not a Game: The Game” struggled to keep up with an influx of users following its unveiling on Wednesday night’s episode of “.” The app was downloaded 50,000 times in the first 24 hours, the “Full Frontal” team told Variety Wednesday, acknowledging that this resulted in outages:

“Many famous apps have crashed on their first day – like ‘Pokémon Go,’ and we all know their fate: being used in Hillary Clinton’s greatest Dad joke of all time.”

“Full Frontal” launched the app as an attempt to get its audience committed to vote in the upcoming midterm elections. Modeled after and other successful mobile trivia games, the app quizzes users on their knowledge of the U.S. political system. Players can win their share of a $5000 cash prize every day, and are encouraged to register to vote and ultimately make their way to the polls.

“This is truly a learning experience for us,” Bee recently told Variety about the game . “We are very excited about it – and very curious.”

The excitement apparently rubbed off on Bee’s fans, whose downloads caused “This Is Not a Game: The Game” to become the second-most popular trivia app on Apple’s App Store Thursday, according to mobile app analytics specialist Sensor Tower. It ranked as #190 among all free iPhone apps, and became the 49th-most-popular iPhone game Thursday.

But all those new users also caused the app to struggle to stay up, with countless reviewers mentioning that they had a hard time creating accounts or logging in.

“Full Frontal” also acknowledged these issues on Twitter, advising fans to upgrade the app to the latest version. “We love you and we will get through this together,” the show’s team tweeted.