China has carried out the death sentence of Xu Yao, the former head of the film production division at Yoozoo Games, BBC News reports. He was convicted of murdering the company’s founder and chairman, Lin Qi, whom he poisoned in 2020.
The sentence was handed down in 2024, and the execution took place on May 21, 2026. Yoozoo Games confirmed the information, stating that “justice has prevailed.”
Lin Qi founded Yoozoo Group in 2009. The company became widely known in part for the game Game of Thrones: Winter Is Coming, based on the television series “Game of Thrones.”
On December 17, 2020, Lin Qi was hospitalized and died nine days later at the age of 39. Shanghai police later said the cause of death was poisoning.
Xu Yao, who had overseen the company’s adaptation project for Liu Cixin’s novel “The Three-Body Problem,” was detained on suspicion of murder. In 2015, Yoozoo acquired the rights to adapt the book, and in September 2020 reached an agreement with Netflix to produce a series.
As the Associated Press reported, the conflict between Lin Qi and Xu Yao began after the company founder decided to transfer operational management responsibilities to other executives. Investigators say Xu Yao then poisoned the executive’s food. BBC notes that other company employees were also harmed by his actions.
After his death, Lin Qi was credited as one of the executive producers of the series “The Three-Body Problem.”