[_delirium]

Not necessarily one that the original game could've followed, though. Making a free clone of a popular paid game is a much better marketing situation than making the initial game free and trying to get enough traction for it to make money on the ad revenue.

It's actually not clear to me that 2048 has more revenue than Threes come to think of it. 2048 has more players, but Threes gets $1.99 per player, which I doubt 2048 matches. Perhaps Threes is successfully using the following marketing strategy: make a paid game, get extra attention via a free clone, then write an essay reminding people that your paid original still exists and is the source of these clones, and use that publicity to drive sales of the original.