“We want to celebrate iteration on our ideas and ideas in general. It’s great. 2048 is a simpler, easier form of Threes that is worth investigation, but piling on top of us right when the majority of Threes players haven’t had time to understand all we’ve done with our game’s system and why we took 14 months to make it, well… that makes us sad,” they wrote.  The creators have then put out nearly every detail plan, that went into creating the game.

While some might think this a case of sour grapes, it should be noted that the creators of Threes aren’t the only ones pointing out the similarities.

CNET’s post on 2048 had also noted that while the two games were similar, calling Threes was a much more difficult game with a steeper learning curve.

The post reads, “But where 2048 differs substantially from Threes, an admittedly far more difficult game with a steeper learning curve, is in its addictive conceit. 2048 is difficult — and you don’t realize that until you first progress far into the game; whereas Threes will aggressively remind you that you must keep the board from clutter. In fact, I’ve gone one game in Threes earning as much as 10,000 points to my next where I earn in the low triple-digits, moving too quickly and mindlessly to realize I’d made fatal mistakes so early on.”

For the creators of Threes, though, the imitation hasn’t caused too much damage.As this TechCrunch piece points out, “For the makers of “Threes,” the good news is that the emergence of the clones hasn’t decimated its market share – the app is still a Top 10 title in Puzzle Games, Card Games and the general Games category in the US and a top 20 Overall app on the U.S. App Store.”