Addiction is more perverse than that: I'm sure the players could stop if they wanted to. But they just don't want to. They too start rationalizing "it relieves so much stress", "it calms me down" etc.

F2P games are nowhere near as dangerous as casinos. 90% of players waste nothing more but their time. They're more similar to social media. Really, i wonder why social media hasn't figured out a way to have meaningful microtransactions yet.