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> You want to stop them from playing through too much of the game's content and burning themselves out on it. So you lock them out with a timer, forcing them to come back later. Then you reward them for coming back every day.

Simultaneously offering a pay-to-play option that enables the user to bypass the timeout with money

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This is the key difference. They mobile games don't want you to wait and come back tomorrow. They want you to pay to remove the blocks and just keep playing, today, tomorrow, every day.

But since they know not everyone is addicted, they want both.

Hardcore addicted people and people who are at least so on the hook to come back regularly.

This is not _entirely_ true, not that it changes anything significant about the predatory nature of f2p developers.

They absolutely want you to come back tomorrow. Apparently (inferring from what e.g. Mihoyo says and does about "total lifetime income") a whale that spends a bit less at once, but keeps doing this for years is far more valuable than one that blasts through the game and burns out immediately. You also need some dolphins and free-to-play people, both to fill out the multiplayer lobbies and appear less predatory.

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