Lin Qi, the CEO of the Chinese game company Yoozoo, died on Friday after he was allegedly poisoned on December 16, reported The Hollywood Reporter.
He was 39 years old.
As per The Hollywood Reporter, some Chinese media outlets reported that Lin was allegedly poisoned by Xu Yao, a senior executive in the Yoozoo’s film and television division. Lin was reportedly poisoned with a cup of pu-erh tea following a work dispute between the two.
In an article, The Hollywood Reporter said that the police announced that they had apprehended Xu, soon after Lin was admitted to the hospital. The statement read: “At 5 p.m. on Dec. 17, 2020, the police received a call from a hospital regarding a patient surnamed Lin. During the patient’s treatment, the hospital said it had determined that the patient had been poisoned. Following the call, the police began an investigation. According to investigations on site and further interviews, the police found that a suspect surnamed Xu, who is a coworker of the victim Lin, was the most likely the perpetrator. The suspect Xu has been arrested and investigations continue.”
A report in Variety said that Yoozoo said in a statement on Friday that it had received news of Lin’s death from his family, but did not specify a cause or add more details.
Lin had founded Yoozoo in 2009. The company is best known for developing the game, Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming.
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Lin was recently named as one of the producers of Netflix’s upcoming works The Three-Body Problem. It is an adaptation of a Chinese sci-fi series written by Liu Cixin. The books have been translated into multiple languages and have become an international bestseller.
Yoozoo had acquired the rights to adapt the work in 2015 and Netflix had bought the rights from them to adapt the books into an English series. Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and DB Weiss will be adapting it; while Rosamund Pike, Rian Johnson, and Brad Pitt’s entertainment company, Plan B, will be producing it.