Previously, access was set to expire today (July 7th)
It is theorized that OpenAI may time the release of GPT 5.6 in Codex to convert people who have lost access to Fable, so this is an interesting game theoric consequence.
Also consider that Fable launched on June 9. Many people including myself bought a 1-month Anthropic subscription just to use Fable.
By extending it to July 12, they're gonna get a second month out of a lot of such people. If it really expired today, I wasn't going to renew my month.
I immediately downgraded my subscription as soon as they revoked access, then upgraded it again once Fable came back. So they're getting no extra month out of me unless they keep Fable available.
Isn't the plan locked for the month though? I don't see them processing refunds for anyone who starts with Max and downgrades to Pro. Although the converse wouldn't be true: they'd be happy to upgrade a plan at any point.
My theory is they saw capacity would have issues during weekday working hours due to last minute frenzy of usage, so would rather it happen on a weekend if it has to happen.
It's also possible that giving access to Fable when lots of people have been taking time away from working on things (4th July, World Cup, etc) meant they didn't spend much time with it.
It is theorized that OpenAI may time the release of GPT 5.6 in Codex to convert people who have lost access to Fable, so this is an interesting game theoric consequence.