/usr/games should never have existed in the first place, imnsho. If it's a small game, its binary could just have been put in /usr/bin. If it's a large game, it probably should be in /opt/$game.

It's a historical unix thing. Things in /usr/games (which were not all games) were frivolous and not essential to the OS, and were distributed as a separate tape or archive so that admins could easily choose whether or not to install them.

I'll also note /usr/games/dm ( https://github.com/vattam/BSDGames/tree/master/dm ) which allowed sysadmins to restrict when programs in /usr/games could be run. Setting up that structure in /usr/bin would be more work to maintain.

/usr/games existing allows people to find the most important binaries. If in */bin finding all of these could be difficult

We have a hierarchical filesystem. /usr/bin/games could be a thing.