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Right, but I don’t think 100/mo is quite what is considered a whale.

Just as in casino gambling, where I believe the term came from, a whale is someone who throws a few hundred to several thousand into a game in a month, possibly in a large number of smaller transactions so they don’t even realize their running total. It’s the people for whom the “10’000 rubies for 49.99” in-app currency chests are meant for.

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Side story, I shortly worked for a big game company that dived into mobile games, and learnt from the market team that the most bought packages where the cheapest and the most expensive ones. The intermediary ones were nearing 0 sales.

So they kept adding new packages at higher prices until it reached about 120$ IIRC. All intermediary packages are just there to make the "best value" (read highest price) package more enticing.

I agree that a $100/month is probably on the low end for the whale category. But, I think his broader point is that there’s at least some evidence that the whales in question are, in fact, people with disposable income (i.e. middle class or better; often professionals) for whom pay-to-play games are a substitute for other equally expensive IRL hobbies that are not uncommon among people in that social strata (like, say, golf, tennis, or skiing).

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