I find it incredibly stupid when teams announce they are making X when obviously they are going to get a C&D for it.

Many of these people I suspect have no intentions of actually following through - if you're an aspiring game dev, you can toil in obscurity on your own game or mod and hope it's one of the lucky ones that gets noticed by the press and community. Or, you can just take a well-known IP and put together a proof-of-concept for a remake or unofficial sequel, and if it looks remotely promising you have an effectively 100% chance of getting coverage. So they build just enough to show it, get the press and the C&D, and then they can say "aw shucks, too bad" and parlay that into a greater audience for the original work, or job interviews with established game companies