Steinberg Licensing & USB eLicenser

great - but you haven’t really consulted so far ? We got this information from a newsletter from one of your elicenser technology customers before we got this from you.

so how long are you thinking until the elicenser servers are switched off…just a rough guess would be good ?

For a period of six months as you state in your press release! As far as I’m concerned I purchased my elicencer hardware and software, it’s mine and I don’t see why I should make a phone call every 30/days to ask if it’s ok to use it. It will be very difficult for steinberg/Yamaha to backdate licence terms and conditions already agreed many years ago into new ones without consent of all parties, it’s going to be a disaster , what with all the forced hardware upgrades to run Windows 11 it seems that all.parties would see a huge slump in sales, along with new products that will want to exploit it even further, many people will just unplug their stable systems from the internet, leave their dongles plugged in and just carry on making music. Contrary to popular belief , the majority of cubendo users don’t have multiple machines that gets dongles plugged in and out of it every day out to g it at risk of getting broken!

That’s entirely your choice, and I fully understand your concern about protecting your investment. Yes, how Steinberg implements protecting people’s investment in their licenses is changing with the new Steinberg Licensing.

Characterising this as a 30-day subscription is not an accurate reflection because we are still providing a permanent license which means exactly that within the scope of the EULA and the law.

No your not , it’s not a permanent licence , unless we sign in with you every 30 days then we have no licence .

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The dates provided to our eLicenser technology customer do not state when the eLicenser servers will be switched off, they are contractual support dates to provide a clear timeline to our customers so they can plan their own transitions.

Given Steinberg is by far the largest and most complex user base of eLicenser, it’s natural that our own transition may take longer. We will be the last ones to turn out the lights on eLicenser.

Again, one of the compelling reasons for moving away from this technology as quickly as possible is because it is no longer fit for purpose, creaking at the seams and poses a business risk to us as well as a real risk to our users investment. Delaying this transition any longer would be irresponsible.

That’s not true. Your license is still there waiting for you to log in and use it. It doesn’t go anywhere; it doesn’t explode.

Hi Ben - I’m sure your not breaking your own EULA or the law. The law is pretty weak in this area anyway :slight_smile:

I take issue with the idea that you are providing a permanent or perpetual licence…it depends on what you describe as the ‘licence’ because what you provide to the customer is limited to 30 days - that is renewed according to your policies. .That’s not actually permanent…in fact that’s the dictionary definition of a ‘subscription’.

The licence may well be credited to your online account as ‘permanent’ but that is not is what is being supplied.

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Unusable until we login with you to use what we paid in full for months earlier …the more i chew on this thought , the worse it sounds .
Im out of here for a few days to let this soak in .

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understood but not relevant in the scope of this discussion

Of course, all the money invested in Steinberg products,DAW, instruments, libraries etc over the years has immediately lost all its value, if for any reason people wish to dispose of their licences and libraries they’d be valueless, new people would just sign up for the monthly payment and suspend ithe subscription when they’re not using it.

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I happen to have a 2nd USB dongle device. I wonder if there’s any chance of getting that activated as a backup so that I have two dongles to retain access to my old SX songs if one of them breaks?

I appreciate you may not know the answer to that!

I wouldn’t mind SB’s response to that too.

But if this is not possible, I hope that SB gives USB eLicenser users plenty of notice before the servers are shut down so that licenses can be transferred to a new dongle.

hello it is not possible to have a license in 2 dongles … I think it is a limitation of the hardware, or the system.

No, that’s not possible. A license can only be stored on one USB eLicenser.

By that logic, the money you say you ‘invested’ was simply another form of subscription. It’s simply that you paid it in a lump sum as opposed to monthly instalments.

If you say bought cubase for 500 five years ago with an upgrade or two, that equates to probably less than the cost of an average subscription throughout that whole time period. And the likelihood is that you actually could still sell your cubase license today, regardless of the fact you’d used it all that time, therefore recouping even more.

THIS ,tells me that in the future you WILL be offering subscription , most companies that offer subscriptions also offer and give extra’s to people that take up the subscription model that you can’t buy a perpetual licence for .
You can say till your blue in the face there are no plans for a Subscription but in your own black and white the model is there ready to be implemented at any time ,especially getting people to reavtivate their licenses every 30 days .

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@Highly-Controversial,

This is simple to me and it is a 3 step process:

  1. Introduce the new licensing that calls home every 30 days. People will moan and groan which will eventually calm down. OR like me they will put BFD3 in the trashcan. They know this from others doing this SAME system (Hello AVID, IZOTOPE etc)

  2. Offer the subscription model with some perks (S1) yet still allow people to pay annually (This is what Presonus are doing right now with the Sphere thing). The faithful annual people who don’t subscribe get less features and left out on SPHERE MEMBERS ONLY online things, sorta like a late night bottle club.

  3. Drop the Perpetual notion in perpetuity and ONLY offer subscription. Sell this as some kind of great thing to be paying monthly and NOT being able to open your stuff unless you pay up. Extortion comes to mind.

The USB licenser is just done with the new system. I have had 3 of them break here. When the server is gone you can’t move ya license and its time to get on the train

All that said I am as the Youtubers say, Super Excited about it!!! LOL
Sternberg can say whatever they want. They said no subscriptions but the writing is on the wall.

When StudioOne goes subscription only I will be done there as well. Reaper is looking really good these days.

What is it that you want, for them to make a special announcement on your behalf - even though there’s nothing formal?

No-one has said there WON’T be a subscription. By allowing 30 days offline is to provide user flexibility balanced against the risk of people abusing and sharing offline activations.

It’s just a number their end, it could be 5,7 or 10 days and still wouldn’t make a jot of difference about the license being perpetual or not. You can have monthly subs which need to activate every 3 days.

Would it help if they dropped it to 20 days, perhaps, so you can separate the two?

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Umm , i don’t think they’ll drop the perpetual licence for quite along time if ever but like Plugin Alliance you could see temptation’s to get you to go subscription .
For the first time in 22 years Steinberg is make your software obsolete , non usable IF and WHEN the servers for your dongle go down and the dongle breaks . It’s all been said before so i’ll leave it there

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I don’t see why they can’t make a patch for the Elicencer for when the servers are shut down ,to have for the registered owner an Offline eliecencer to allow you to transfer you licences from one dongle to another if one starts becoming temperamental and then make to old one defunked , that way we have the software for as long as we can get hold of a dongle (new or secondhand ) . If that was the case then i might consider the 365 licence as id always have the dongle for life but to say if it breaks ,tough shite then the future is a risky game at the moment , nothings set in stone, it’s all if’s and maybe’s
Anyway time to stop before i get a warning :grin: