This seems really common to be honest. I wouldn't be surprised if there are shops specifically aimed at doing this. I have followed a few indie games where this has happened. Its seems really risky to do a PC only release now, because its only a matter of time before it gets stolen and put on mobile if you are even only moderately successful.
What shocks me is it seems like small creators can have their work destroyed by a single DMCA complaint, but blatant copies like this are ignored.
Everyone in that thread is suggesting he lawyer up, but the copycat is almost certainly in China so that’s a waste of time. The best he can hope for is to get it taken off the Play Store.
A bit unrelated but does it jive with people's expectations that this game sold 50k copies (~$700k?) in early access and is considered only moderately successful by the poster?
$700k assumes only USA/USD sales, but its anywhere from 20% to 60% cheaper by region. Also the developer could be inflating the download count, different steam analytics sites put sales between 20-50k. This very easily pushes total sales down from $700k to as low as ~$100k.
Games like this are also a big risk. Years of work could easily hinge on if a few big streamers decide to play it on a whim, or if you are selected to be on the front page.
I'd be willing to accept that maybe half of the sales are non US at 50% sales price. That's still around $500k, which still sounds very high. I'm not seeing any reason for the developer to be lying here and the actual range of predictions on your link is (17-90), so I'm ignoring that. Still seems high, indifferent to whether it was risky.
I would assume he has to take into account that it took him about 2 years (based off his Reddit profile post) and there's Steam's 30% cut + publisher costs.
I'm indifferent to whether he's feeling wealthy after this. I'm surprised at the sales volume for what looks like a pretty generic game. Does this really look like a game that 50k people would buy to you? In early access? Are my priors so wrong on how what it takes to sell $100k of games?
To be honest, no. It does not look like a game 50k people would buy in early access to me. I would assume it has to be with some streamer playing his game [0].
Regarding your other question, I think that yes, you might have a high conception for what it takes to actually sell some games. Not to disparage on this other dev for example [1] because it sure looks like the games are well polished, but these games definitely look very unappealing to me and I'm pretty sure a lot of people as well. IIRC he talks about how people really have a fondness for specific topics in games and how one can leverage that.
What shocks me is it seems like small creators can have their work destroyed by a single DMCA complaint, but blatant copies like this are ignored.