Codex Head: Paid Subscriptions Reset Globally Tonight at 6 PM Pacific Time
Thibault Sottiaux, head of OpenAI Codex and ChatGPT products, first posted the complete chorus of Rick Astley's 1987 song "Never Gonna Give You Up," and then announced a global usage reset for all paid subscriptions, allowing users to continue using the service after exhausting their limits while modeling in Blender with Astra. The reset will take place around 6 PM Pacific Time on the same day, as the work week is about to begin.
This is an immediate global reset, not a banked reset. The official help center distinguishes between the two types of resets: the immediate reset activates a 5-hour window and a weekly window, and recalculates the 7-day limit from the first request made in Work or Codex after the reset; the banked reset can be used until it expires and does not permanently increase the plan limit. The consumption scenario he highlighted is Blender 3D, consistent with the selling points of computer and browser tasks written after Astra's launch: in official evaluations, Astra scored about 72.6 points in approximately 40 minutes on OSWorld 2.0, while Sol scored about 75 minutes with 65.7 points.
This is another switch within the same week. When Astra was launched in batches, stored cards were supplemented daily; after an early release, full cards were given to Plus, Pro, and Business users; he also announced that the subscription extraction for long-tail scenarios could drop to about one-third to one-fourth. On August 30, the reset was also set for 6 PM Pacific Time, challenging users to exhaust their limits and use /fast. On August 31, they celebrated a full reset with 25 million active users and referred to themselves as a "reset company." Community tracking records show complaints: with each goodwill reset, the next regular 7-day anchor point gets pushed back.
The limits themselves remain opaque. The weekly limit is officially stated as "may have additional weekly restrictions," with Plus tier Astra estimated to handle 5 to 45 local messages in about a 5-hour window, Sol about 10 to 100 messages, and Fast for Astra calculated at a standard rate of 2.5 times. Reports on GitHub indicate that Plus hit limits in about 20 minutes, and Pro's weekly progress bar dropped from about 45% to about 5% within a day. The global reset does not change the rate cards, only reverting the percentage back to 100%.
In terms of market mechanics, what is reset is the progress bar in the paid pool, and what is consumed is the GPU on Astra in 3D and Agent links. The event driver is the weekend modeling that empties the weekly limit, requiring users to return on Monday to continue working. Computing costs still occur per token, with the ledger using switches for pre-holiday supplies. Beneficiaries are the paying users who burn limits on Blender and Astra; under pressure are those who must raise all paid tiers back to full levels around 6 PM. The lyrics do not change the contract; the button at 6 PM changes the window.
Source: Public Information
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Thibault Sottiaux has personified the limit switch as operational management. In June, he checked the backend for misuse, in July celebrated 7 million users, in August celebrated 20 million and 25 million, in early September replenished cards daily, on September 6 changed long-tail measurement, and on September 7 used an old song to attract clicks for the global reset. The product head has become a coupon distributor in the community, with the reset button being more predictable than model cards. His description of "reset company" is not a joke but a business description: release, incidents, holidays, weekend exhaustion, the answer is always reverting to 100%.
The capital path is to use free computing power to retain users. Astra's rates are higher than Sol's, and 3D and toolchains consume more output tokens than chat. Weekend Blender may breach the weekly window early. If users do not replenish on Sunday night, paying users will hit a wall on Monday morning, leading to cancellations and negative reviews appearing in the first hour of the work week. The global reset accounts for this cost on the company's computing bill, not under refunds. Banked cards are for off-peak use, while the global reset is synchronized; both are cheaper than publicly lowering prices—lowering prices affects all future tokens, while the button affects the current window.
Specific comparisons are necessary. Game companies use double drops on weekends, cloud providers use temporary upgrades, and telecoms offer off-peak data packages. OpenAI applies the same tactics to its most expensive flagship model without disclosing absolute weekly limits. The user community has learned to reverse engineer: the more frequent the goodwill resets, the more chaotic the individual 7-day clocks become. Anthropic and Google use fewer persona accounts for issuing coupons, instead embedding restrictions in documentation. The industry is at a stage where "flagship models rely on operational compensation measurement," with increasing button frequency indicating that pricing has not stabilized enough to be unspoken.
Structural judgments indicate a transfer of pricing power. The mechanism is: when the unit price is high enough that the progress bar runs out in a few days, whoever controls the reset button controls the real capacity. Lyrics capture attention, timestamps capture computing power. The subscription fee does not buy a fixed token package, but an option on "whether the person in charge is still willing to press the button." The day the button stops, the rate card will become the only truth.
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The more frequently coupons are issued, the less willing the price list is to change.
The progress bar can be full on Monday, but the contract capacity has not changed.
Whoever presses the reset button defines what you have purchased.