Game Clone Legality

It's clever, bur probably doesn't hold water legally, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade

There is nothing illegal about creating a game that uses the same fundamental gameplay. Gameplay can't be copyrighted. You should be alright.

Game mechanics aren't copyrightable, right? So unless these clones copied the code, aren't these takedowns invalid?

Isn't that game, like, copyrighted or something?

No, you're thinking of copyright: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_v._Amusement_World

Clever way to offer gaming without copyright issues. Congrats!

Yes.If you separate out "how should things be" from "how things are", then from duke-nukem levels to you name it, caselaw is very clear that they can control this through fairly simple copyright law principles (derivative works, etc), without even having to resort to more complex theories.Your best argument is fair use, but it's not a particularly good fair use argument in this case.This isn't even a close case.Your only secondary argument is antitrust b

I'd say the same apply as for any other business. If something already exists then they could sue you to stop distributing your game and/or pay for royalties. So before starting the full development you should make sure that your version of the game is not a copy of an existing one. And changing one minor rule (going to both sides) or replacing terms like "hotel" becoming "skyscrappers" will look like complete copy.

Did the dev had some copyright/patents on the game? Why didn't the NY Times just clone it? Surely they could have leverage their users to start to use their version?

You can't copyright game mechanics, so there's little to stop anyone from copying games like these.