Gumdrop mentioned hiring people to help him with his game. One possibility is that he hired the first one, he got to work, then their relations soured and he left without handing over the results or tools that he created.
There are other possibilities as well. Gumdrop could have lost/broken his drive, had no backups, so he had to recreate everything from scratch and that's painful to say the least.
I doubt that he sold the project or lost control over it. If he sold the project, a deal would include handing over all copyright, code, tools, resources and assets, otherwise nobody sane would buy it. If he lost control, there would have been a gap in providing content to patrons and there would probably be signs that somebody took over. Even if they continued the same mode of operation, they would not be able to create the Christmas prequel without deviating significantly from Gumdrop's style. Besides, Gumdrop would be able to produce evidence to prove that his account was hacked.
Nope, I think it's still the same Gumdrop. No use trying to shift blame to somebody else and absolve Gumdrop of his part in it.
