You can argue that you’re increasing business for the real Settlers game, but the people who ultimately care about this are the rights holders for the game you copied. If you didn’t ask their permission, you are making an assumption that they’re OK with what you’ve done. If you didn’t ask first, you’re in effect saying you don’t care what they think. In the case of Teuber himself, you don’t know if you’ve offended him or flattered him. If you love Settlers so much, you owe it to the creator of the game to ask permission before copying his hard work.

I appreciate the effort that your team put into copying Teuber’s work. But I’d much rather have seen your talented team create something original and artistic. Copying is easy. Push the limits. Create something new. It worked for Tringo.