Agreed. The dev of 2048 didn’t know about Threes when he created it. He was taking inspiration from another game, 1024 which itself was inspired by Threes. None of them are clones of Threes though. Rather they are variations.
I’m sure different people have different ideas of how much stuff has to change to be a clone. Is Mario a clone of Pacland? Is Sonic a clone of Mario?
Another issue is as much sympathy I have for the Threes developers having spent 14 months designing and making Threes, the ended up with a game that’s super easy to clone. I don’t know how to feel about that. A game like Monument Valley is not easily cloned whereas Threes is. Just like Flappy Bird was easy to clone and hence you saw tons of clones. I have no idea what I’m trying to say other there. I just think there’s something to that.
