Usually I poke into the creative forums more than anywhere else, but I thought this didn't quite fit as its more ... 'game politics' in nature.
I mean there has always been a wave of 'This is a Doom clone' to 'This is a Wow clone' cried out about any FPS or MMO since the 90's, a lot of it I roll my eyes at and ignore. Admittedly there are occasionally blatant clones (although the only one I can think of is the chinese phone version of 'not' Overwatch).
I have a ways to go before I really worry about this, I'm still learning the ropes at the moment, but how worried should one be that their project 'infringes' on an existing game? I mean the idea I'm tumbling around in my head is "I like X, but I think X would be better if done with more Y" (In this case Space Engineers and the concept of first person'ish spaceship construction).
Obviously I can see the issue if I simply created something that functioned just like (or worse, like an inferior version of) Space Engineers and called it .... Star Technicians, a pure replica so to speak. I would rightly be called out on it. But how close is to close? If I try for the same basic concept with differences in approach am I still 'copying'?
I guess what I'm saying is yes, there will always be those who will say Y is copying X, but on the level of developer to developer is there respectful boundary on ideas and concepts that is good to follow?