Game of Thrones games developer dies of poisoning

Lin Qui chairman and CEO of games developer Yoozoo, famous for the Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming strategy game died of poisoning on Christmas Day according to Shanghai police.

The Shanghai police statements said Mr. Lin’s colleague identified only by his surname Xu as the main suspect. Mr. Lin was believed to have a net worth of £960m  ( 6.8bn Yuan_ according to the Hurun China Rich List.

Lin Qi founded Yoozoo in 2009 and successfully led the company through a difficult period when the gaming industry was going through substantial changes towards mobile gaming.

The company issued an emotional statement on its official Weibo microblog saying “ Goodbye youth, We will be together, continue to be kind, continue to believe in goodness, and continue the fight against all that is sad”, which attracted over 290 million views on Weibo.

Mr. Lin was a calligrapher and a poetry enthusiast. Mr. Lin had admitted himself to hospital after feeling unwell but was in a stable condition but on Friday the founder died. According to local media, Mr. Lin had been poisoned via aged Pu’er tea, a fermented Chinese drink.

Yoozoo is also co-publisher of Supercell’s smash-hit game Brawl Stars along with China’s Tencent Holdings. The company is also known for its connection with the Chinese sci-fi novel Three-Body Problem as it holds rights for its film adaptation. But its expansion into the motion picture business was not successful, although in September it granted US streaming platform Netflix the right to adapt the sci-fi novel for television.

Lin Qi born in 1981 in Wenzhou, Zhejiang is also known as Titan Lin, was a Chinese entrepreneur and founder of Youzu Interactive the company that produces games both for its home and overseas markets, was acquired by Susino Umbrella in an all-stock deal in 2014. Lin Qi owned approximately 100,9 million shares in Youzu, which were last valued at $2.2billion according to Wealth-X. Youzu Games Hong Kong Limited was founded in early 2013 in Hong Kong focuses on multiplayer games in North America and Europe. In 2016 YOOZOO Games bought German online game developer Bigpoint for $89.7million.