The new Steinberg Activation Manager is great, but it could be even better if it allowed to deactivate a remote computer, like Adobe Creative Cloud.
I thought Steinberg Activation Manager would allow that, but no, you have to locally deactivate a computer before you can activate another.
The initial intention of Steinberg Licensing was for a 30-day “phone home” period (or was it monthly?) for online activations, with offline activations valid for a longer period. This would have allowed for remote deactivation of online activations, as the licensing software on each computer would have had to check periodically with the licence server and request a new activation. Steinberg was intending to emulate Adobe (with Creative Cloud) and Microsoft (with Microsoft 365 - which has a higher number of activations per subscription), though Steinberg would be selling perpetual usage rights for a version rather than a subscription.
When the initial plans were announced, there was strong community sentiment that, as Steinberg sells perpetual licences for a product version, activations should be perpetual. Steinberg responded to that community sentiment, as well as comments that the initial plan of two activations per licence was inadequate for some legitimate user scenarios.
The result was that Steinberg Licensing changed to perpetual activation with three activations per licence before its public launch. However, the move to perpetual licences seems to have made remote deactivation impossible: there is no reason for Steinberg Licensing Manager to “phone home” and there may well be no mechanism built-in for it to do so. It seems that the changes made in response to community feedback may well have designed out any possibility of remote deactivation.
Even without remote deactivation, you are still much better off than under eLicenser: you can have up to three machines activated at once, with remote activation possible without additional hardware so long as you have Internet access.
