Lin Qi, the billionaire CEO of Chinese video game publisher Yoozoo, who is expected to be executive producer on the Netflix sci-fi series “The Three-Body Problem”, died at 39 on Christmas Day, Friday, during an investigation into whether he was murdered by poison.
Lin served as executive producer alongside Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and DB Weiss in the English adaptation of the novelist Liu Cixin’s “Three-Body Problem” trilogy for Netflix, announced in September. The platform acquired the adaptation rights from Yoozoo, which won IP in 2015 and is working on other Chinese adaptations through an affiliate called The Three-Body Problem Universe, led by CEO Xu Yao.
Local reports had previously speculated that Lin had been poisoned with aged pu’er tea, but that no longer seems to be the consensus.
China Economic Weekly, a magazine linked to People’s Daily, a spokesman for the ruling Communist Party, said Xu is suspected of poisoning Lin due to “job disputes” that resulted in the former’s salary cut. He may have administered the poison using drugs, he added.
A doctor named Zhou who saw Lin was quoted by other media on Saturday as saying that the executive had eaten blueberries the day he fell ill, but it is not clear whether they were a source of poison. Zhou speculated that, based on his symptoms, Lin may have found a neurotoxin like the deadly tetrodotoxin found in puffer fish. At least two other vehicles said he may have been hit by a cocktail of different poisons.
Based in Shanghai, Shenzhen-listed Yoozoo said in a statement on Friday that it had received news of Lin’s passing through his family. He did not specify a cause or provide further details.
“The board of directors gives its highest respect to the president for his contributions to the company,” he said, adding that Yoozoo executives and employees felt “deep sadness and grief, and sent their sincere condolences to the family”.
In a post on social networks signed by the entire team, the company wrote a more poetic farewell: “You saw what was imperfect, but you still believed in beauty; found cruelty, but still believed in kindness. Together, we will continue to be kind, we will continue to believe in beauty and fight against all that is cruel ”. The goodbye was accompanied by an image of a handwritten note with a quote from “The problem with the three bodies”.
As of 2 am on Saturday, stacks of white flower bouquets and heart-shaped candles were left outside the company’s entrance in memory.
A message from Lin’s account posted a final message on a company-wide social networking chat group citing Steve Jobs, according to reports. It said: “‘I would trade all my technology for an afternoon with Socrates.’ Goodbye, children. “
Yoozoo was ranked as the ninth highest grossing game publisher in the country last month, according to data from Sensor Tower. It is known abroad for having developed the game for smartphone and PC “Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming”, based on the HBO series by Benioff and Weiss.
Shanghai officials said on Wednesday that they received a report last week from a 39-year-old man surnamed Lin who appeared to have been poisoned and later arrested a suspect surnamed Xu.
Although neither the victim nor the perpetrator was mentioned by their full names, Chinese reports identified the victim as Lin de Yoozoo and the suspect as his colleague Xu Yao.
Yoozoo said in his own statement on Wednesday that Lin had been admitted to the hospital on December 16 after “developing acute symptoms of illness”, but it was still a stable condition and was making “clear progress” in his recovery.
That was not the case.
He arrived at the hospital on December 16, barely able to walk with a “very painful expression of acute illness” on his face, said doctor Zhou, was immediately taken to the ICU, where he had to be resuscitated after his heart stopped.
He was transferred to a second hospital, but already appeared to show signs of brain death as early as December 17, although a formal diagnosis has not yet been made, Zhou added.
Although the police were able to arrest the suspect quickly, Xu did not reveal the exact type of poison or poisons used in time to help Lin’s recovery.
Lin founded Yoozoo in 2009 and accumulated a net worth of about $ 1 billion (RMB 6.8 billion), according to Hurun China Rich List. He was the company’s largest shareholder, owning 23.99% of the shares – down from the 34.8% he held in July 2019. Between January and April this year, Lin reduced his holdings in Yoozoo eight times to cash out $ 41.3 million (RMB270 million), according to the Chinese outlet AI Finance and Economics.
He helped the company, which began in online games, navigate the difficult transition to switching to mobile games in the past decade, despite increased competition. But moving on to filmmaking was a little more difficult. The company had initially said in 2015 that it planned to spend $ 183 million (RMB1.2 billion) to transform the novels “The Three Body Problem” into six different films, but those goals have yet to be realized.
Lin’s death leaves a vacancy on the nine-person board of Yoozoo, which she will try to fill as quickly as possible, the company said, adding that it continues its operations.
A Chinese finance agency wrote that the case surprised people around the world with how “the kind of plot that only appears in movies and TV shows happened in real life”.