Yes, mostly what I'm saying, but forgetting the important part:

From the email: > but these tools put an outsized strain on our systems. Capacity is a resource we manage carefully and we need to prioritize our customers using our core products

OpenClaw doesn't put an outsized strain on their systems any more than Anthropics own tools. They just happen to have more demand than they can serve and they benefit more when people to use their own tools. They just aren't saying that explicitly.

It has nothing to do with fairness or being nice.

If this was a gym subscription, it would be an equivalent of some people going to the gym, and some people sending their android to the gym every day, for the whole day, and using as much equipment as the gym policy allows.

It would be like some people sending the gym's competitor's android to the gym instead of the android the gym provides. Said gym also doesn't have enough equipment for everyone's gym appointed android despite being more expensive. Said gym doesn't want to admit this, nor does it want to raise prices on an already more expensive subscription. Said gym doesn't want competitor's android to gain marketshare. Said gym blames competitor's android for using up gym equipment despite gym's own android being capable of using as much equipment.

> using as much equipment as the gym policy allows.

which said customer paid for. And now they want to back out of it because it turns out they thought users wouldn't do that.

I say they ought to be punished by consumer competition laws - they need to uphold the terms of the subscription as understood by the customer at the time of the sign up.

> there is a wide distribution of actual use

except when people start using openclaw, and the distribution narrows (to that of a power user).

I hate companies that try to oversell capacity but hides it in the expected usage distribution. Same goes for internet bandwidth from ISP (or download limit - rarer these days, but exists).

Or airplane seats. Or electricity.

> I hate companies that try to oversell capacity but hides it in the expected usage distribution.

Except they charge you less because of the distribution. Competition for customers doesn't evaporate.

Why would you assume that to be?

They might charge you less, but they don't have to and wont if the market allows it

Companies compete by optimizing margins. Lower margins, more sales, and more customers for more forward looking sale. Higher margins, more profit per sale.

That's a "fixed" constraint, because maximizing future adjusted value is what companies do.

So they don't play little games with mass products. If they did they would be harming their own bottom line/market cap.

(For small products, careful optimization often doesn't happen, because they are not a priority.)

Note this thesis explains what is going on here. What was previously one kind of customer (wide distribution of use), is now identifiably two. The non-automated token maxers (original distribution) and automated token maxers (all maxed, and growing in number). To maintain margins Anthropic has to move the latter to a new bin.

But the customer centric view also holds. By optimizing margins, that counter intuitively incentivizes reduced pricing on lower utilized products. (Because margin optimization is a balance to optimize total value, i.e. margins are not the variable being maximized.)

The alternatives would be bad for someone. Either they under optimize their margins, or change regular customers more which is unfair. Neither of those would be a rational choice.

(Fine tuning: Well run companies don't play those games. But companies with sketchy leaders do all kinds of strange things. Primarily because they are attempting manage contradictory stories in order to optimize their personal income/wealth over the companies. But I don't see Anthropic in that category.)