From the article: "5 out of the 8 founders and executive team are from Digital Chocolate, the makers of Galaxy Life".
So it's a pretty large mis-representation to say they copied another game, as they were on the team who built said game (granted, the writer doesn't do a very good job of conveying that). MUCH different than cloning a competitor.
The game they built is the property of Digital Chocolate, so whether they're from that company or not, they're copying another company's game. The ethics of that are of course debatable.
They copied the gameplay style and tutorial. Again, I mentioned many times it's a smart move. I don't think they copied CODE or did anything shady. But go play galaxy life and then Clash of Clans. It's dead obvious.
Yours was only the 2nd comment to this article. The first being "that was ridiculous!".
How did you so quickly draw a bead on HN, and manage to decipher what the rest of the audience thought about it?
For my part... I think these guys are simply Zynga without the rumours of an oppressive workplace. They have 60 employees, and a business model identical to many others. I'm not sure what if anything makes them into a startup.
Zynga copies another game exactly down to the tutorial and makes money... LAWSUIT OMG HATE HATE HATE
You people are such hypocrites