Chinese authorities executed Xu Yao on 21 May for poisoning his associate, billionaire gaming founder Lin Qi, the man was convicted in 2024 for a plot that police and the court called an ‘‘extremely despicable’’ murder.
Xu Yao was convicted last year of disguising lethal substances as probiotic pills and giving them to Lin after the two fell out in 2020, shortly after Xu helped secure a Netflix deal that would adapt the Three-Body trilogy for television.
Lin, the founder of Shanghai-based Yoozoo Games, fell ill in December 2020, went to hospital and died nine days later at the age of 39. Police arrested Xu days after Lin was hospitalised, and prosecutors said the scheme also left several others sick.
In its statement confirming the execution this week, Xu Yao's company said: "justice has ultimately been served." The company added: "We deeply mourn Mr. Lin and extend our heartfelt condolences to his family," and, "As colleagues who fought alongside him, all members of the company are grateful for the impartiality of the judicial process."
The court that tried Xu described the plot as "extremely despicable," and one of Xu's victims was quoted as saying, "Justice comes in the end, even if it's late." Prosecutors won a conviction in 2024 after investigators tied the disguised toxins to the poisoning.
The episode began to surface publicly in 2020 when Lin decided to put other executives in charge of business operations at a Three-Body Universe unit, and the relationship between the two men deteriorated. Xu had been appointed in 2018 to lead the Three-Body Universe subsidiary that managed projects tied to the franchise.
Yoozoo Games owned the film adaptation rights to Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, the novels that formed the basis for the Netflix series 3 Body Problem. The streaming adaptation in 2024 quickly became one of the platform's most-watched shows, and Lin was posthumously credited as one of its executive producers.
The murder, the trial and now the execution have refocused attention on the company and the franchise linked to lin qi's name. Yoozoo, best known for the strategy game Game of Thrones: Winter Is Coming, was believed to have made Lin a wealthy figure in the Chinese games industry — his net worth was estimated at about 6.8 billion yuan at the time of his death.
For prosecutors, the case was straightforward in chronology: Xu poisoned Lin in 2020 after being sidelined, investigators arrested him days after Lin went to hospital, the defendant was convicted in 2024, and the sentence was carried out this spring. Courts emphasized the severity of the crime and the broader harm caused by the plot.
But the case also underlines how corporate disputes touched an international cultural property: the books at the centre of the fight had been translated into nearly 30 languages and became a global media event when adapted for television. The adaptation’s rapid success in 2024 — which elevated the franchise worldwide — came long after Lin's death.
Yoozoo’s statement framed the execution as closure, thanking the courts and expressing continued mourning for their founder. For victims and colleagues who endured the aftermath, the verdict and its enforcement mark the legal conclusion of a case that began with a corporate power struggle and ended in murder.
With Xu Yao executed, the judicial chapter is closed; what remains is the corporate and cultural legacy of Lin Qi — a founder who helped connect a Chinese science fiction trilogy to a global audience but never lived to see the full reach of that success.
