This has always been the case over in the world of freemium games. The vast majority of the playerbase (70~80%?) are Free2Players (F2Pers), while the rest are

This has always been the case over in the world of freemium games. The vast majority of the playerbase (70~80%?) are Free2Players (F2Pers), while the rest are whales (paying players) and an even smaller subset of them are space whales who spend enough in a month to buy a luxury car or two. The games go to great lengths to retain those F2Pers because they are the ones the whales and space whales play together with and/or against. No F2Pers, no whales, no game, no business.