China Executes Xu Yao for Lin Qi Murder Over Netflix Deal
Chinese authorities executed Xu Yao for killing lin qi, the billionaire founder of Yoozoo Games, after a poisoning case tied to a business dispute and a Netflix deal. Xu Yao’s execution reportedly took place on 21 May, and his company said Tuesday that justice had ultimately been served.
The company also said, “We deeply mourn Mr. Lin and extend our heartfelt condolences to his family,” and added, “As colleagues who fought alongside him, all members of the company are grateful for the impartiality of the judicial process.” The case ended with Xu’s 2024 conviction for murder and the closing of a death sentence that followed one of the most closely watched corporate killings in China’s gaming industry.
Yoozoo Games and Lin Qi
Lin founded Yoozoo Games in Shanghai and built it into a company best known for Game of Thrones: Winter Is Coming. Yoozoo also held the film adaptation rights for the Chinese science fiction trilogy that Netflix turned into the 3 Body Problem series in 2024, and Lin was posthumously credited as one of the show’s executive producers. The trilogy is based on Liu Cixin’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past and has been translated into nearly 30 languages.
Lin appointed Xu in 2018 to lead Three-Body Universe, a subsidiary handling projects related to the science fiction franchise. The relationship later broke down in 2020 after Lin decided to put other executives in charge of business operations. That dispute set up the poisoning that followed.
The 2020 poisoning case
Xu disguised lethal substances as probiotic pills and gave them to Lin in 2020. Lin went to the hospital in December 2020 after feeling unwell and died nine days later at 39. Police arrested Xu days after Lin was hospitalized, and Xu’s poisoning plot also left several others sick.
Lin was believed to have had a net worth of around 6.8 billion yuan, or £745m, about $941m, at the time of his death. The court described Xu’s plot as “extremely despicable,” and one of Xu’s victims wrote on social media, “Justice comes in the end, even if it’s late”.
Xu Yao execution
The execution closes the criminal case against Xu and leaves the company’s public response as the latest formal statement on the killing. For Lin’s family, colleagues, and the others who were sickened in the poisoning, the punishment ended the case but did not change the events that led from a franchise dispute in 2018 to a death in December 2020 and a conviction four years later.
