Because everyone burns through their limits much faster, forcing them to upgrade to higher limits or new tiers.

I think someone would much sooner switch to a competitor than up their tier.

If model provider believes they have a better model, it can be a viable bet. But many (me included) started experimenting with other providers because of enshittification from Anthropic (price + uptime). Only to find, that Codex is not that worse in quality for a significantly more output per $.

They could just increase the token cost no? There’s little need for cute conspiracies like these

They would have to tell people if they did that.