It’s not hard to draw green pipes and a bird. Similarly, the tone is easy to make.
He’s also in VN, making any copyright suit very difficult.
What most likely happened is that a lot of people in VN saw his sudden $$$. Immediate family, secondary family, and extended family (can be very huge in Asian countries) all asking for money. Then you get friends, classmates, etc. asking as well.
Asking for money is a subset in the art of persuasion.
Practitioners of the art of persuasion use many soft and hard techniques. A general rule in art of persuasion is that techniques efficacy correspond to technique difficulty. The top tier techniques are almost guaranteed to be successful, however it is very difficult to properly use those techniques.
More money more problems.
Fricking you can’t Copyright/Trademark a single word that already exist in the English language.
This is like Zygna trying to sue Wanner Brothers (Who owns DC Comics) over the use of Smallville, as the town is a farming town with ville in its name.
Regardless of why he did it, the amount of criticism chucked his way is absolutely sickening. The hucksters at Kotaku basically organized an internet lynch mob on the idea that “those wacky non-Japanese Asians are at it again”. Because if there’s one thing gamers don’t need, it’s those filthy non-Japanese Asians making video games.
Mobile games are basically popular because of their accessibility.
While folks can say “oh, Flappy Bird has art that looks like Mario 3!” it showed that a disappointingly large portion of gamers are going to pre-judge games made by designers from the developing world as amateurish at best, plagiarism at worst.
he probably just doesn’t need the money. in vietnam (or anywhere in SE asia, really) you could ball the fuck out on $50k for like 2-3 years, a month of that work and you’d be set for life.