Chief executive of Game of Thrones game publisher Yoozoo lands in hospital as Shanghai police probe poisoning case
- Yoozoo, known as the game developer of Game of Thrones: Winter Is Coming, said its founder and CEO Lin Qi has been hospitalised
- Shanghai police announced an investigation into a suspected poisoning case involving a victim surnamed Lin
Lin Qi, the chairman and chief executive of the Chinese games publisher Yoozoo, has been hospitalised in what the Shanghai police characterised as suspected poisoning, in a case that has gripped China’s social media.
Lin, 39, visited a Shanghai hospital on December 16 after experiencing “acute symptoms of illness,” according to a WeChat statement by Youzu Interactive, as Yoozoo is also called. Lin is currently under treatment and his condition is stable, the company said.
Shanghai’s police said in a blog post on Weibo that Lin’s 39-year-old male colleague, identified only by his surname Xu, is suspected to be the culprit.
Yoozoo has been facing increasingly fierce competition in the gaming market since it debuted on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2014. Its gross profit margin narrowed from 70 per cent in 2014 to 31 per cent in 2019, according to the company’s financial reports.
Shares of the company plunged by as much as 18 per cent since Lin was hospitalised, dropping for the second consecutive day today in Shenzhen by as much as 9.7 per cent to an intraday low of 12.71 yuan.
Xu, identified by Shanghai police as the suspect, works at a motion picture company, Yoozoo said without elaborating. The publisher recently established an affiliate called The Three-Body Universe to develop products based on the franchise, led by chief executive officer Xu Yao. Xu did not respond to an inquiry sent to his LinkedIn account.
“We hope that radical people and [such] behaviour will not change our well wishes for the world or change our destination,” Yoozoo said via its official WeChat account, adding that it is “operating as normal” with its executives and core staff.
