Saga and Etermax Are Turning Trivia Crack’s Willy Into an AI-Powered Social Companion
In the relentless race for attention in mobile gaming, studios are being forced to rethink how players discover and connect with their favorite titles. Now, Saga and Etermax are making a bold move that could reshape how intellectual property travels beyond the app store. Together, they have launched an AI agent for Willy, the official character of Trivia Crack, transforming one of mobile gaming’s most recognizable mascots into a living, breathing digital companion.
Trivia Crack, the #1 trivia game on mobile with 150 million annual users, has long relied on Willy’s fun, smart, and caring personality to anchor its global appeal. But instead of limiting that personality to the in-game experience, Saga and Etermax are expanding it outward. Willy’s new AI form is designed to exist where players already spend their time, beginning with Instagram and X, where he can chat with users about virtually any topic, post independently, and guide interested fans toward downloading the game or purchasing in-game assets and merchandise.
Rather than functioning as a simple in-app feature, Willy becomes something more persistent, an always-on character presence that bridges social interaction and game discovery. It is a calculated response to the mounting pressure studios face as traditional user acquisition channels grow more expensive and less efficient.
“Character AI agents are a thrilling new form of entertainment for consumers, but they become truly valuable to studios and creators when they’re tied to real products, real IP, and real outcomes,” said Rebecca Liao, CEO and co-founder of Saga. “This collaboration is about leveraging IP that the Trivia Crack team has worked hard to create for a far more organic and effective distribution and user acquisition engine. ”
The strategy is rooted in a simple but ambitious hypothesis. By embedding a familiar and beloved character directly into social-native environments, Etermax aims to reduce the friction between discovery and download. Instead of relying solely on paid ads to drive installs, the company is betting on personality-driven engagement to influence user intent long before someone taps “install.”
“Our thesis is simple: character-driven AI can meaningfully move the needle on installs for a game that already has massive global recognition,” said Fernando Vasconez, Head of Gaming Investments and Partnerships at Saga. “If it works, this becomes a repeatable model for how traditional studios can extend their IP into social-native environments to solve the user acquisition problem in the game industry, and eventually expanding to other non-gaming industries.”
Under the hood, Willy’s AI agent runs on Saga’s hyperscaling infrastructure, built on a proprietary training model that combines LLMs and SLMs to produce fine-tuned character AI agents. The platform supports programmable interactions and is structured for future expansion into rewards, payments, and monetized engagement. While the initial rollout centers on user acquisition, the architecture leaves room for deeper integrations over time, hinting at a future where character agents evolve into fully operational digital brand ambassadors.
Etermax sees the move as a natural evolution of how it connects with its global audience. “We’re always looking for new ways to meet players where they are and bring them into the Trivia Crack universe,” said a spokesperson for Etermax. “This collaboration allows us to deploy AI-driven engagement as a new acquisition channel, while staying true to the characters and experiences our players already love.”
For Saga, a hyperscaling platform for AI and blockchain that has processed over 23 million transactions worth more than $2 billion in aggregate since its early 2024 launch, the project represents a broader vision. In 2025, the company released its AI Character Agent Network for Gaming and Digital IP Commerce, positioning autonomous agents as tools that can acquire, engage, and monetize users on behalf of studios and publishers at massive scale.
For Etermax, the Argentina-founded studio behind one of the world’s most-played trivia franchises, the experiment is both pragmatic and forward-looking. If Willy’s AI presence succeeds in converting social conversations into measurable installs, it could signal a shift in how legacy gaming brands leverage their intellectual property in a crowded, ad-saturated marketplace. In an industry where attention is currency and character loyalty can be as powerful as gameplay itself, Willy’s leap from app mascot to AI companion may mark the beginning of a new era, one where the most valuable acquisition channel is not an ad placement, but a conversation.