What next for Yoozoo after boss' death?

Police in Shanghai have detained a suspect after the death by possible poisoning of Lin Qi, the billionaire founder of Shenzhen-listed Chinese video game company Yoozoo. According to local media, the person in custody may be Xu Yao, who heads Yoozoo's movie production arm.

China Economic Weekly, a magazine connected to the official People's Daily, said a disagreement between the two men likely stemmed from Lin cutting Xu's pay in a bid to push him out of the company.

Lin's death leaves an opening on Yoozoo's nine-person board of directors. The firm said it would seek to fill the position as soon as possible, adding that it was continuing its operations.

The Three Body Problem problem

Lin and Xu's movie production arm at Yoozoo had been working on a film adaptation of the sci-fi series Three Body Problem for Netflix. In March 2019, Amazon was reportedly in talks with Yoozoo to buy filming rights for the project for $1 billion (€930 million). Yoozoo later denied this and then sold the rights to Netflix for an undisclosed sum. Netflix said in September it would adapt the bestselling books into an English series with Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, according to Variety. Lin was involved as executive producer on the project, but after having helped the company navigate the transition into mobile games, moving into film production proved more difficult.

When Yoozoo purchased the film rights to develop The Three Body Problem series in 2015, plans to develop it under its own production team were reportedly beset with problems, and senior personnel left during early stages of the process, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The firm said in 2015 it planned to spend $183 million to turn The Three Body Problem novels into six different films.

The Three Body Problem also ran into problems after there was criticism of comments by author Liu Cixin made to The New Yorker in 2019 that seemed to defend Beijing's actions in Xinjiang, where China is accused of constructing internment camps to detain the region's Uighur Muslim minority. A group of US Republican senators called on Netflix to drop the project.

A games pioneer

Founded in 2009, Yoozoo is best known outside China as the developer of Game of Thrones: Winter Is Coming, a strategy game for smartphones and PCs. In the first half of this year, nearly half of its revenue came from outside China. The firm was one of the earliest Chinese game-makers to expand internationally.

Lin himself was worth $1 billion, according to the Hurun China Rich List. He was the company's largest shareholder, owning 23.99% of shares, down from a peak of 34.8%. Between January and April of this year, Lin reduced his holdings to cash out $41.3 million, according to Chinese outlet AI Finance and Economics.

The 39-year-old died on Christmas Day, according to a company statement. Previously, he had been taken to hospital on December 17 and diagnosed with possible poisoning. There was speculation on local media that Lin had been poisoned via aged pu'er tea, a fermented Chinese drink.

A doctor named Zhou, quoted by local media, said Lin had arrived at the hospital barely able to walk and with a "very painful expression of acute illness" on his face. Zhou said Lin's heart had stopped and he had been resuscitated, but he died two weeks later.