If you were to look around the industry these days, you might think whales had gone extinct. But they haven't, really. They've just re-branded.
These days, free-to-play publishers generally don't refer to the heaviest spenders in their games with the exceedingly cynical comparison to the largest animals on the planet. Much like the actual practice of commercial whaling, the term is so loaded with negative connotations that publishers typically don't use it, at least not in public. Instead, it's much more common they refer to their highest-spending customers by the more respectful euphemism "VIPs," which I will assume is short for "Very Important Placental-marine-mammals."
And while free-to-play publishers have found a nicer way to refer to their best customers, the tactics they use to separate these whales from their money are as cynical as ever, if not more so.
source https://www.gamesindustry.biz/how-does-zynga-hunt-for-whales-this-week-in-business
