There is no way Tencent is not aware that this would damage their reputation. Then why are they still doing this? It's like copy and paste without making any changes at all.
How is this still a discussion? There are already so many clones/rip-offs of various games existing in Steam and in Google Appstore. Game developers discussed this for years and eventually settled in that similar games are OK, as long as you have different art assets, names, sounds, slight changes to the story. And so 1000s of different Tetris clones and other game clones appeared....
And now it's suddenly not OK anymore? Well then I hope every shop removes all the countless clones from their shops, back to at least 15 years ago (which is about the time the heavy cloning and rip-offs started).