They have a year long option as well.
Yes, as i said, that will operate differently as it’s a single machine at any one time and you won’t be able to put it out to another until confirmation of it’s return.
Yikes, better hope your computer doesn’t fail on a friday night with a 1yr activation loaded
During lockdown my dongle was in stuck in a building when we left on a Friday and found it locked on the Monday, didn’t use zero downtime as I was continually told someone would be on-site next day… This went on for a week and half, with me physically driving to the site each day despite limitations on travel.
Within new system, If my computer failed with a 1yr activation on it, I’d contact Steinberg to have it released, it’s really not rocket science. I know what I’d prefer to be doing.
But don’t let common sense get in the way of wild theories, The staff here love missing time away from their families to answer such questions.
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that’s my understanding too - it was hinted at in an earlier post.
EDIT
and there is NO WAY that Steinberg want to separate you from your license - but the road to license hell is paved with good intention 
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Why? Why do you need to require something in exchange?
Why are you not checking now that our legitimate license is not being abused?
Why do you feel is right to abuse your customers in the name of checking they are not abusing the license?
I have a feeling this is more of a cultural thing with you, Steinberg.
Some heads would explode at Steinberg HQ if your relationship with your customers wouldn’t involve some kind of misery for the latter. It was the dongle, now should be monthly checks, but “something” has to unpleasantly remind the customer that they’re using Steinberg stuff.
So?
Yes, but for all its bad sides (plenty of them), it was an autonomous system.
You are trying to force a system in which using my license is dependent on you.
Appreciate the frankness in telling us that this is not a discussion, but an imposition.
Everybody moves on, including some of your users, for whom Nuendo (in my case), Cubase and so on will soon be past stuff.
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How is a system dependent on the presence of a third party better in every area than an autonomous one?
In a practical way, how will you be compensating your users for the inevitable downtimes that will happen?
Will there be financial compensation from Steinberg when their customers lose work because of Steinberg system?
Or will the License Agreement just contain the usual bullshit about you not being liable for anything, not being responsible for anything and not committing to anything?
And when you leave your customers with unusable software, this arrogance of now will make place to posts in which you’ll explain with tears in your eyes how “hard you work around the clock”, together with those “reliable” partners of yours that you keep mentioning (how convenient, you can also say the solution in out of your hands when disaster strikes), how “sorry you are for any inconvenience caused” and “how important you, the customers, are to us”.
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the drama
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For my use - I’m more than happy to retain the dongle. Just like subscriptions I do not appreciate App’s that “phone home” - it only takes one recent MBA graduate to screw things over to “make more money” collecting and distributing my data via complex unreadable user agreements.
I can “live with it” but I would prefer to have to CHOICE to retain the Dongle.
But if I am to live with it there are 2 things needed.
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A dead-man switch - if Steinberg or Servers kick the bucket somehow - I must be able to retain usage rights for the software (aka a perceptual license)
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If each machine have to be “activated” - the BlackMagic DaVinci method seems the best. You have 2 activations available. If you activate a 3rd - the first one is automatically deactivated. Simple and no fuss. No need to jump into a license manager and “deactivate” a previous license. And it takes seconds… That is user-friendliness and makes it easy to switch between machines. I have 3 BM DaVinci Studio licenses - 2 on dongles - one in SW. The SW license is used on the notebooks. The dongles are on my render beasts.
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Yes, a choice would be good! I don’t want subscription either, if/when Steinberg goes sub I am gone
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Does this mean that we have to buy an annual license from C12 on? Every year again and again?
No, we are still selling perpetual licenses. We’re talking about the licensing system requiring that you at least be online once in a given year.
I thought they cleared all previous activations if you activated a 3rd?
It’s a good method as that “kill switch” approach prevents you from sharing which people exploit via ebay etc. It wouldn’t work with what most users are complaining about here, as they’re afraid of a machine not being licensed when they return to it.
Davinci method has potential of removing a machine without you realising. i.e. if you have a laptop which is online while you activate a third elsewhere without thinking.
Close the lid, pack it in a bag and re-open in an offline environment… oh, it doesn’t work!
Great post though, really valid points and well made.
Presuming you’re using Davinci, any idea how long you can go without being online in their system? It’s actually a key you type in too isn’t it?
What about the eLicenser Control Center after the old servers will shut off? Let’s say I have a C11Pro on my USB eLicenser, and I want to re-install C11 on a new PC. To do so, I guess I’ll need the latest eLCC version installed. I sort of understand that it is already part of the Cubase installer, but I wander if any possible issues (I admit I can’t imagine any) can arise from that side?
Again, there seems to be the impression that the eLicenser server will be shut down any time soon. That’s not the case.
No sorry, I do get that the server shut down won’t happen in the near future. Anyway, the statement was that sometimes in the future it will happen. I just wander about possible consequences of that, with reagard of the interaction of Cubase with the eLCC.
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You are locked in, you can not leave as you would with GDPR and a dongle.
Digitallysane - stop being an a**hole
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No but it could mean if you haven’t used your licences for 10 years " sorry no account " or " your systems out of date please upgrade to use " …poor poor old dongle getting abandoned
Playing devils advocate, for the eLCC to work, it needs to be compatible with the OS, and connection to the live servers for maintenance tasks. So any of those two components failing would be the risk.
Perhaps it’s confirmation of the eLCC client being updated which an important question, along with the servers?
At the end of the day, I’m pretty sure that when the main application (Cubase/Nuendo/GA/HALion etc) fails to load on any given O/S then the supporting eLCC mechanism is no more relevant anyway. As long as it ‘survives’ that period, there shouldn’t be an issue.
The only issue is those running truly out-dated machines and may want to transfer/manage licenses internally. But perhaps when we’re that far in the future Steinberg will be happy to roll out a mechanism which free’s all that up as part of some abandonware style roll-out?
The only true value legacy software has in the new system, is the opportunity to update or upgrade at a discounted price. If Steinberg decide to raise the bar higher for such pricing then it would allow those licenses to have more free reign in the wild perhaps?