I don't think this is the same kind of stealing?

If you're being a great artist who steals you may perfectly reproduce something, but in such a different and novel context that it feels fresh, or taking something verbatim and then modifying it with your work, vs say taking an series of ideas from a work and then not really changing or moving from what they were originally expressing

An example of this is from Offworld Trading Company[0], which literally started by copying the market from Age of Empires[1] and then iterated on it as well as the auction mechanics from MULE[2], I vaguely recall them talking about this in their GDC talk[3], though I could be misremembering that(it's a good talk though)

I could be wrong, but I'm not sure if anyone who was stolen from in those cases feels hurt by it

Compare that to stealing, where the parties stolen from were really quite angry at what was stolen, Triple Town vs Yeti Town[4], which very much looked like a lazy clone

-[0]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/271240/Offworld_Trading_C...

-[1]: https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Market_(Age_of_Empires_...

-[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.U.L.E.

-[3]: Offworld Trading Company: An RTS Without Guns : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2C4z_apu2I

-[4]: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/spry-fox-and-the-clone-wars