GAME THEORY

Was Office Politics Behind the Fatal Poisoning of a Chinese ‘Game of Thrones’ Billionaire?

A suspect has been taken into custody following the fatal poisoning of Chinese gaming tycoon and Netflix producer Lin Qi with tainted tea.

Investigators in Shanghai have detained a suspect connected to the fatal poisoning of 39-year-old billionaire tycoon Lin Qi, who died on Christmas Day. The alleged perpetrator is a 39-year-old employee of Lin’s company who has been identified by local media as Xu Yao. He is suspected of poisoning his boss with a tainted cup of pu’er (or fermented tea) on Dec. 17, when Lin fell ill and never regained consciousness.

Lin’s net worth was estimated to be around $1.3 billion.

Lin is the founder of Yoozoo Games, which developed the popular Chinese video game based on the Game of Thrones enterprise called Game of Thrones: Winter Is Coming.

Before he died, Lin was working on a Netflix project with Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, based on the popular Chinese sci-fi trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past by Liu Cixin. The title has been listed as a favorite book of Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg.

Lin’s company had purchased the rights to the trilogy book The Three-Part Body Problem, which it tried to develop and produce, but the project was eventually abandoned due to infighting, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Lin was listed as the executive producer on the project to be written by Alexander Woo. Xu is described as a senior executive for Yoozoo’s film and television division.

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