I thought this as well. I'm apparently a weirdo because I've just used the website for the past 14 years, on both desktop and mobile (though with an ad-blocker), but for all the folks that really love the alternative Android apps, why can't bring-your-own-key be an option?

The fact that they're installing an alternative app kinda makes them super-users of Reddit anyway, so asking them to generate their own personal API key shouldn't be too unreasonable.

It just seems strange that the app would choose to completely shut down instead.