There’s no guarantee that our resellers would want to carry our entire product line, even if it were practical to quickly add dozens or even hundreds of products to our channel offering. We are focused on standing up a new online shop as quickly as possible, as we believe this is the shortest route to an outcome that is successful both for Steinberg and for our customers.
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In that case lots of companies are unprofessional. We are using several software packages that are sold via service providers like Asknet, one well known is DigitalRiver in Ireland. There are many more of these eCommerce platform providers out there, like Arvato (which was used by Microsoft for a long time).
This way of outsourcing the Online shop is pretty normal and absolutely not unprofessional.
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I hope the new shop will allow usage of x3 or x4 payments as NI do with Klarna and Arturia with another solution I don’t remember.
On this time of a new Cubase version it is disapointing to hear this and that there is no time limit for a solution. You should give a max delay for publishing of new Cubase/Nuendo versions.
I hope there is no legal action going on in the background, and you have access to all the shop pages and code, removing the need from a full rebuild from scratch … which could increase the restart delay and push it to 2024.
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At this stage it’s unknown whether these kinds of short-term financing options will be available in the new shop.
You can surely understand why it would be unwise for us to make any kind of definitive statements about precisely when this situation will be resolved. We are just as keen as our customers to unblock our release pipeline and get our exciting new products into your hands.
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Not at all. Feels medieval.
Yeah, everybody knows (or used to) about Digital River etc but all these shopping experiences have long gone and are not usual at all (and again, we’re talking about integration with Steinberg’s accounts and about user experience).
One can go to any other audio software company and try an online shopping experience to compare: Ableton, Bitwig, Avid, Arturia, NI etc.
Anyway, it looks like Steinberg are forced to change their ways by this situation, so hopefully the good that’ll come out of this will be a modern shopping experience, and not the same thing with a different logo.
Sure, one wonders why are Steinberg caught in this (they call it unexpected) situation when there’s that press release from the FTC from April (half a year ago) revealing serious issues with Asknet?
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We understand that you may be feeling some anxiety and concern about this situation, but please keep discussions here civil. We will take an active hand in moderating this thread to keep it on topic. Please help us in this regard. Many thanks!
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Sorry to hear that.
Could the Cubase 13 release be impacted if your online store is down too long ?
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All planned product releases are currently on hold until this situation is resolved. From our frequently asked questions:
What about upcoming product releases?
In the short term, planned product releases will be delayed until we have a new online shop in place. We have many exciting products in the release pipeline and are looking forward to showing you what we have been working on. Unfortunately, we must ask for your patience while we work to reopen our online shop. Our new products are worth waiting for!
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Who said that 13 was unlucky, eh? 
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Asknet has entered into self-administered insolvency
I can’t find any news on this on the web. Any search for “Asknet” turns up results as if they are still operating normally.
Asknet have notified us (and presumably their other customers) about their insolvency proceedings, but we have no insight into or control over their own plans for communicating this situation more publicly.
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… and I was so looking forward to Friday the 13th of November as the potential release date of Cubase 13.
They may just have not bothered to turn off the computers on the way out the door.
The key figures haven’t been particularly good for some time
Excerpt from the invitation to the extraordinary general meeting on May 2, 2023
“The board of directors notifies the general meeting that the company has incurred a loss of more than half of its share capital. The management has not passed a resolution at the general meeting on this item on the agenda intended because, in accordance with the legal regulations, it is limited to reporting to the board of directors the loss of half of the share capital in accordance with Section 92 (1) AktG.”
Microsoft Word - aoHV_2023_Einberufung(11184845.3) (1).docx (hubspotusercontent-eu1.net)
This press release from roughly 1 year ago is quite enlightening:
Wow. First of all this is really bad news (not only for us users but Steinberg in general). The optics and ramifications of this really could not be worse.
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I think it’s important to keep things in perspective. Yes, it is obviously a very serious situation, because our online shop is a crucial sales channel for us. But it is not the only sales channel, and many of our products remain available for sale through our network of resellers and distributors around the world.
Steinberg is more than healthy enough to handle the short term issues that the lack of this sales channel creates. If there can be a silver lining to this eventuality, it is that we will almost certainly be migrating our online sales channel to a larger provider who can offer us, and by extension our end users, a better service.
Obviously it would have been far better had any transition from Asknet to another provider to be made after long-term planning, but we will have our online shop back up and running as soon as possible. Many of my colleagues are working hard to make this happen, and we are confident that we will be successful.
We are sorry for the inconvenience caused by the temporary loss of the online shop, but it will be back, stronger than ever.
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Opps , what a glitch, That explains the delay of Cubase 13 release probably ?!
hope Steinberg over come the situation fast with not a significant damage in all areas.
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Well, well I would say 2 providers, just to avoid same situation, the second being Steinberg itself!,
Shouldn’t Cubase 13 be renamed Cubase 12.5 or 12.0.80 and provided as a maintenance update regarding the very long delay for a working webshop which seems to be outlined here.
Please see this earlier reply.
No, obviously not, and I can’t even follow your logic here. Clearly you wish only to be provocative. When the online shop is open again (and we plan that to happen a lot sooner than after “a very long delay”), we will be able to release a number of exciting products that are waiting in the wings.
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