Except the whale narrative is largely a false narrative created by the game industry to avoid saying that the money comes from kids and gambling addicts.

Those people with more money than sense do exist and they make up a portion of the mtx money, but the vast majority is from people who probably can't afford to make purchases like that (but do anyways because their brain can't say no).

The industry has been honing these skinner box techniques for decades now - it's what they used to get people to pay a monthly subscription for an mmo they only play when they log in to do their dailies.