eLicenser future

Steinberg Lounge
1

If it were up to me all my licenses would be on my USB-eLicenser.

Lately I see more and more companies dropping the eLicenser. The first one I noticed was Aturia, then Vengeance Sounds Avenger and in December Waldorf. I think it has to be a balancing act between the costs of using the eLicenser technology, piracy / loss on income, possibility to sell more copies without dongle based protection mechanisms. Even todays anounced Halion 6 won’t require an USB-eLicenser anymore for those who don’t want it (I guess it will only require soft-eLicenser).

I have no idea what other software companies use eLicenser technology besides the music industry, but engineering software springs to mind (high licenses costs, low sales volume). Is Steinberg out of touch with the licensing fees they charge or have the software locks become that good?

Any thoughts on this issue?

2

I don’t keep up with what’s cracked or not but I think most of the companies that dropped eLicenser had plugins that were either cracked years ago, back when the protection was weaker, or the protection was so poorly implemented in their plugins that they got cracked anyway. (In this case it’s the company’s fault it was cracked, not the dongle. I think the same happened to some iLok stuff)