People are now selling iPhones with Fortnite installed for $14k on eBay

Yes, there isn't much of a link between them. But if the current three-way legal clash between Epic, Google and Apple were to be likened to the main Star Wars saga, then this new development would probably be Rogue One - that is, a spin-off, but still otherwise canon.

Apparently, in the wake of Fortnite's "banishment" from both the Play Store and App Store over Epic's sneaky "Mega Drop" stunt, which led to Epic suing both tech giants for "monopolising" the app development sphere, people are now selling iPhones with Fortnite installed on eBay for prices reaching as high as ten grand in US dollars.

Yes, US$10,000 (S$14,000). For a phone with a particular free-to-play game installed. One that you can still download and play on PC, console and the Nintendo Switch. Just for reference, you could probably pick up not one but a few new iPhones (complete with a hefty data plan) for that amount of money.

Of course, it's not the only listing selling such an item. Far from it. There are others marketing pretty much the same thing, but at much more reasonable prices, although the fundamental reason of why anyone would spend money just to play Fortnite on an iPhone still eludes us.

Anyway, the current listings we've seen on eBay range from a couple of hundred to a few thousand bucks, so a five-digit price tag is far beyond a ballpark figure even by those standards - heck, that "ball" is in space already. Perhaps it's somewhere on the Death Star.

Regardless, this new craze for smartphones with pre-installed Fortnite stems from Apple and Google's decision to simply delist the game within their respective application stores, but not remotely remove it from devices that already have it.

Naturally, people went ahead to cash in on the supposed demand for the game, although it seems they've forgotten that unlike toilet paper, Fortnite is free-to-play and still readily accessible on other gaming platforms. Good grief.