even if he doesn't make money off of them he could be sued over it, you can't just use art from someone else's game in your game without their permission (unless it's in the public domain)
Technically true. It's a tough state of affairs and by default I'm strongly against stealing other's work but there is a less hardline approach to it too, when a critical mass has been reached.
I know it's a slippery slope, but when you've become the darling of the industry and made over 20 million pounds, you're mainstream and should expect some copycatting, it's just human nature. Minecraft's sales are approaching those of FF6, and there are a lot of fangames that are made in homage to that, using it's original graphics. I think that they're made because they touched a deep place in the fans heart, not out of opportunism. It's really hard to know where the line is, and I guess in some distant obscure way when you support a fangame (of a blockbuster) you take bread out of someones mouth, but not any more so than by buying food made with subsidized US or Canadian wheat.
i do think cloning (whether assets are stolen or not) is a pretty big deal, a lot of indies lately have had their games cloned/ported to other consoles without their permission, for instance lugaru and garden gnome carnage were both ported to iphone without the permission of the people who made those games
Porting a game without permission is totally wrong. By the way,
I'm not defending the OP. I don't have time to police the indie game scene and decide if someone is or isn't crossing the line. I'm just saying that if you make a decision to make game modelled after another do
at least the following: Don't profit from it, give credit clearly, be respectful and think of the developer (and their families).
