In the F2P model, “whales” are players who are willing to spend much more in a game than average players. The terms comes from the world of Las Vegas casinos, where big spenders are referred to as “whales.”
Games that go after the money of specific big spenders operate in a the morally grey territory of exploitative game design. According Nexon CEO Owen Mahoney, however, this strategy is also faulty in pure business terms.
