I know two people like that. Both absolute genius level but for some reason the only way they can think about making money is by somehow moving it from someone else's pockets to theirs without creating any value. If they spent 10% of their talent on value creation and the rest on the business end they'd be doing much better than they do now. Really wasteful.

That's strange. It seems not only wasteful but much riskier. Do you have some guess for why they operate that way?

I think that at some level it is insecurity. The idea to make money out of nothing is harder to convince yourself you can do than to take money that is already there and move it.

It's unbelievable to which lengths people can go in order to NOT work.

The games have (I checked and they, and now lots of clones, are still online) descriptive names, and word of mouth make people search for them, and search engines do find them.

They are all simple stupid games (think floppy bird, although games in question are not that one)

Speculation: because the only way he could make these games "wildly downloaded" is a massive advertising spend. If the games can't actually maintain a userbase on their own, they might not be worth anything.

Paid installs.