Yoozoo’s board of directors issued a statement on December 26 confirming the death of founder and president Lin Qi.
“The directors, supervisors, senior management and all employees of the company express their deepest condolences at the passing of Mr. Lin Qi,” said the statement.
A colleague of Lin – a 39-year-old man with the surname Xu – was detained in Shanghai, with authorities saying in a statement that they were alerted to a suspected poisoning on December 17.
Police said Xu was “suspected of committing a serious crime”.
Two days before his death, Yoozoo issued a statement saying that Lin had been admitted to the hospital due to “physical discomfort”, but was in a stable condition and improving.
Lin, whose company was among China’s top mobile game publishers in terms of global revenue, was estimated to be worth about $ 1 billion ($ 6.8 billion yuan), according to the rich list. global Hurun Report.
Founded in 2009, Yoozoo is known for the 2019 RPG title “Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming”. After turning his attention to filmmaking in 2014, Lin bought the rights to the Chinese science fiction novel “The Three-Body Problem”, with the Yoozoo Group entering into an agreement with Netflix to adapt the book into a television series produced by David Benioff and DB Weiss of “Game of Thrones” fame.