[cheesylard]

Blame the piracy laws. These games are, of course, inherently worthless but the current policies are propping them up when innovation should be in other places.

[crusso]

That makes no sense. If they were inherently worthless then no one would pay to play them.

You mistakenly conflate cost to produce with value to consumers. Obviously the content has value to consumers.

[cheesylard]

People only pay for them because they don't have any other choice. If it was legal to sponsor an Android fork that had a pirate version of the Play Store, I'm sure all of the hardware manufacturers would be shipping it with their phones.

[crusso]

That's irrelevant. You said that the games were "inherently worthless".

You're attempting to twist the language so words don't mean what most people think they mean and I'm not buying it.

[cheesylard]

Fine, you are correct. I didn't think you were nitpicking my choice of words.

They should be worthless.

[AndrewKemendo]

Unfortunately "worth" in any functional sense is defined by the demand for it, so in that sense these are immensely valuable. That is my lament, that something with so little functional utility (outside of a dopamine reward loop) has captured so much voluntary worth.