The games people clone

Apparently it is completely legal to clone someone else’s mobile game.

After flappy bird was [taken down](techcrunch.com/2014/02/08/flappy-bird-going-down/) from the app stores, a number of clones came up to fill up the void. Apple and Google started rejecting clones soon after. Indie Game: The Movie (which is a must see documentary if you want a look at the human side of indie game development) gives a glimpse of what must have happened with Don Nguyen. If you’ve been living under a rock the past few months Don Nguyen is the indie game developer of the extremely popular, difficult yet addictive mobile phone game Flappy Bird. His free game was sitting atop the Appstore and Google Play store charts in 53 countries for more than a month and was reportedly making him $50k a month from ad revenues.

Recently HackerNews went into 2048 obsession mode. The game 2048 is a browser based clone...