I have seen the Star Citizen icon in about one tenth of my students harddrives. The chart I linked to shows an increase in the player base that does not seem to fully track funding.
My current guess is that funding outside of sales is mostly new players and funding during sales is mostly whales.
So, yeah, mostly whales (sales are the main source of income) but the input and income generated by new players is not insignificant.
I’m at a loss to explain, but things like PUBG have been janky and buggy as hell but still wildly popular. Young players are really compelled by sandbox play boxes even if the gameplay structure is mostly absent, it seems. Also, PC whales are big whales.