Below I have five examples. Well tell me how you feel do developers rip off original games or build upon them?

1. Gran Turismo the first real racing simulation game. Both PGR and Forza ripped off GT.

2. Grand Theft Auto the first crime action game. Both Crackdown and Saints Row ripped off GTA.

3. Wolfenstein 3D and Doom the first FPS games. Every other shooter game has ripped off Doom and Wolfenstein 3D including Halo, Half-Life, Counter Strike,etc.

4. Mario the first stand out platform game. Every other platformer has been a Mario rip off.

5. Final Fantasy and Zelda series the first stand out RPG games. Every other RPG steals from Final Fantasy and Zelda.

Well if I replaced the terms: "steal or ripped off" with "improved or build upon". It would sound a hell of a lot more positive.

So Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon and Eternal Sonata, etc all examples of games that steal or use Final Fantasy games.

Well then I guess you could say that Final Fantasy just ripped off Dragon Quest...

 Sorry I never heard of Dragon Quest. I guess its not as popular as Final Fantasy we never hear of it anymore.

This isn't even close to accurate. The first RPGs were out literally a DECADE before Final Fantasy and Zelda - not to mention the fact that (for the millionth time) Zelda is NOT a role-playing game! You should probably familiarize yourself with tabletop gaming and some of the early games on the PC before making such a sweeping (and wildly inaccurate) claim.

On topic, of course there's a lot of borrowing in gaming, as in all artistic mediums. It's not an issue so long as each new developer can bring something unique of their own to the table. For example, the first Sonic game was definitely not a copycat version of Mario, even though both were 2D platformers/action games. At the same time, there also exist blatant ripoffs of successful games: the endless glut of fighting games in the 1990s, the "catch em all" copycat Pokemon games in the late 90s, the current industry fetish with shooters, and the latest Wii Sports minigame compilations. Although these are always going to exist, they very rarely duplicate the success of the original product, and soon die out as the public loses interest and moves on to other things.

I guess many ideas have been stolen or improved upon by game developers over the years. The games tend to look very similar to the previous games in that genre but with different settings, story and characters.