Ok, thanks for the explanation! So you own the right to use the cards you own in the games, but not the image art. I'll be interested to see how the game designers use the cards, are there any docs explaining game design yet? I know with pokemon my son has two types of good cards he values - rare cards, and powerful card. The rare cards can be quite valuable even if their use in games is weak, so they're the genuine collectibles. The powerful cards have good attributes for game play, so they're the ones he wants for playing, even though most of them are not rare. The rare cards only have value as a byproduct from the success of the game. That's why I'm still skeptical of the value of pepe as a genuine collectible asset that can hold value for decades, the games are an afterthought, and that's not good.
As an isolated event, I can understand your skepticism towards Rare Pepes having any sort of lasting economic value. However, they really are pioneering new ideas and forging ahead in the digital asset space, and I've always maintained that digital assets are going to be huge in the coming decade. Whether Counterparty ends up being the de facto digital asset platform, I don't know, but its currently the most solid.
Regardless of how you personally feel about the Pepe meme and everything, you've got to give the project credit - before this, 'collectible digital assets' were created by centralized entities (Spells of Genesis cards, for example), and then sold to buyers. With Rare Pepes, the pepes are created by the artist, and after paying the submission fee, the artist has control over 100% of the distribution. Those cards can then be (voluntarily) integrated into games, either as playable things, or even as just digital art you can put on the wall of your virtual house. The art thing, btw, requires very little ongoing code, you just need to hook into a json file from the rarepepedirectory containing images and stuff.
Sarutobi is integrating both of those usecases for Rare Pepes into their new upcoming game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICJABB7wZmk, and Spells of Genesis have added Rare Pepes to their Book of Orbs app on iOS and Android (Shaban from SoG hangs out in the pepe chat on occasion, and has discussed adding benefits for Rare Pepe holders to Spells of Genesis, but thats currently not certain). This is in addition to Rare Pepe Party, the card game being developed specifically around Rare Pepes:
http://rarepepe.party. The synergistic effects of platforms integrating each others assets is quite interesting to watch unfold.
Perhaps it's just a fad that will burn out, but I see it as the first in a long line of many interesting projects utilizing Counterparty. I sincerely think it might have more long-term value than you're expecting.
Edit: You can see the business proposal for Rare Pepe Party here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1k8Dq6k4OHLD6NZ-qlwGjLYIq_ndVpopDolOXq7SjDuo/edit