Tell HN: Steinberg shut down their eLicenser service, breaking older software | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: Steinberg shut down their eLicenser service, breaking older software

steinberg.net

53 pointsTonyTrapp22 comments

Steinberg plans to shut down their eLicenser servers in "early 2025". If you are sticking to an older version of their software, internet-activated licenses will continue to work but only until you have to register them again (e.g. you cannot install them on a new PC anymore) , and dongle-based licenses continue to work until you lose or break the eLicenser dongle.

Steinberg is not going out of business - they have just introduced a new licensing service that older software is not compatible with, and apparently they cannot be bothered to keep running the servers for this old service. This move is quite hostile to customers who do not or cannot upgrade to the very latest versions of their software.

IOW their software was worth a lot less than you were led to believe to begin with, and not designed to be trusted nearly as much as you thought, but it could have been worse.

And now it's worse :\

Maybe we need to have a "stop killing DAWs" initiative along with the "stop killing games"...

I was thinking of exactly that, and am hoping that if any legislation comes out of that, it will be formulated in a generic enough way that it doesn't matter if it's a game's server or a music software's license server that is turned off.

If that's the way you really feel, I would expect there is more than one jurisdiction where you are entitled to a full refund by notifying the seller within a year or more of being deceived, and if the seller does not rapidly comply, you are then entitled to file a legal claim for 3X the amount, from which there is supposed to be little defense.

You would have to check with an attorney experienced at handling Deceptive Trade Practice cases.

This is not nearly as serious a violation as actual fraud, and intended to be much easier to substantiate a claim, provided all the rules and deadlines are adhered to.

You would probably want to ask for a refund as soon as you could after finding out you had been deceived, and make sure you had an impeccable paper trail.

It may not be easy to find a lawyer who would take action with only a 3X upside of what you paid, maybe that's what class-action is supposed to be for?

I have described the situation to the German consumer protection authorities (as I am in Germany, and conveniently Steinberg is as well). I would recommend all German residents reading this doing the same, to raise the priority of them looking into it. You can probably do something similarly in other countries without having to hire an attorney.

As for a refund - I directly purchased my software from Steinberg, more than ten years ago, and it wasn't particularly expensive. So there's not much in for me personally, but I would like to see the situation to be addressed at a higher level.

Note that "older software" refers to software released before 2022. So this is not antique software, but software that may be less than 3 years old.

They are trying (of course) to spin it as improved functionality for their customers, but what it really means is that many of those customers will be forced to upgrade -- and when eLicenser is shut down, they will have to pay the full price, not an upgrade price.

I guess their executives need a big end-of-year boost to the bottom line, in order to hit their bonus targets.

> After the eLicenser service ends, upgrading your eLicenser-based product to Steinberg Licensing will no longer be possible. For example, users of Cubase 11 (or earlier versions) will need to purchase a full version to update to the latest version.

This looks like a robbery.

Does their software run in a VM? (perhaps not?, plenty of software has checks to prevent it from running in a VM).

If it does, wouldn't a good recommendation be for anyone who cares about being able to use this software and not lose it in an upgrade to install it into a VM and get its license (within the VM) validated while one can.

This way, one has it backed up in an installed, licensed and runnable state (which will presumably work perpetually for the software one, unless they have checks in the code that force one to reregister regularly for any number of reasons).

some older asio hardware would have a hard time running I suspect, but if it's just so you can load up an old file and export then it may work!

I don't think any environment checks would prevent it from working, but these are realtime audio tools that need to interface with a hardware audio interface via ASIO drivers and I can't really see that going smoothly inside of a VM.

I don't think this is any surprise for anyone using Steinberg software? I no longer use any eLicenser controlled apps, but I have had emails and notifications from Steinberg about this already going back at least a year I think?

It's news for people who don't currently use Steinberg products and may now think twice about starting to use them after this move.

I did not receive any emails from Steinberg. I came across this fact just a few days ago very randomly, and without this random discovery I would have run into a nonfunctional software sooner or later.

This isn’t particularly unusual, sadly, but it’s good to keep pointing. Anyone who theoretically bought a perpetual license can not actually use the software perpetually.

Since the software depends on a service, it inherits the reliability of Software as a Service: virtually none, unless contractually defined.

This should be very clear at „purchase“.

I own a copy of nuendo, but now I'm thinking about switching to something else like Studio One out of spite.

Does this affect any software that hasn't been cracked (aka, pre-emptively improved to avoid this issue)?

I've had enough terrible interactions with Steinberg that they're on my "never again" list.

I've owned Steinberg's Cubase Pro software for years, although I'm not currently using it much. If I recall correctly, their old licensing system required the presence of a custom USB security dongle and also involved low-level software drivers which could cause compatibility problems, all in efforts to lock down the software due to it being heavily pirated. One time I lost the dongle on a trip, and although Steinberg support was able to keep me functional until I returned and could replace the dongle, it was an extra cost and hassle. Also just managing the license activations across multiple laptop/desktop installs was a constant low-level annoyance. It was this way for at least a decade.

After many user complaints, a few years ago they changed to a "soft licenser" system which doesn't require a physical dongle. This is clearly better although managing the license installation and activations is still an extra hassle.

I believe the issue here is only with users still running those older dongle-based versions of the software, and only when they try to reinstall that older version. This is a problem because major Steinberg versions are paid upgrades (while minor upgrades are free). Major versions are usually released every 12-18 months. I have two takeaways:

* This is yet another cautionary tale highlighting the inevitable adverse consequences whenever software makers deploy restrictive DRM measures. Those measures must be maintained essentially forever, which won't happen. It's bad and wrong in all ways.

* In practice, the user impact in this specific instance will likely fall short of worst case because these are expensive, professional-grade audio and music production tools, so most active users do upgrade their versions from time to time. Personally, I don't upgrade major versions every year but generally do so when I upgrade computers every 3 or 4 years. This is because reinstalling a complete digital audio workstation build is complex and time-consuming due to all the plug-ins etc. Since the major version upgrades are around 20% of the software's price and usually add a few major new features along with a bunch of nice-to-haves, it's worth doing every 3 to 4 years because by then the number of new capabilities is usually easily worth the modest cost (modest in the scope of pro DAW tools).

I think the real impact here will be essentially a one-time forced major version upgrade purchase when (and if) a still active user of a very old version needs to reinstall. Ideally, Steinberg would come out with a free patch only for very old licenser versions which upgrades them to the new soft licenser but I think older software versions were likely riddled with thousands of dongle checks throughout the code and thus, they've painted themselves into corner (which they should have been foreseen). Maybe the least-bad solution would be to offer a special one-time very low cost upgrade from any "vintage" version to the first soft licenser version (which is now several years old). Frankly, they should just offer such a "very-old-version --> less-old-version" upgrade for free to maximize good will and head off this becoming a bad PR issue. The number of still-active users who've never upgraded a version that old has got to be very small and if you're already going through the hassle of reinstalling, most users would opt to pay for the upgrade to the latest version anyway.

It's also worth noting that in the past five years a wide variety of good new alternatives have appeared in the DAW market. Cubase is the oldest DAW on the market (dating back to the Atari ST computer) and it's evolved over the decades into a deep, complex tool that's a good fit for some advanced users doing certain types of production. However, few would argue that Cubase is a good fit for new, casual or hobbyist users. I only continue to use it because I already know the software and switching would be a hassle.

> I believe the issue here is only with users still running those older dongle-based versions of the software, and only when they try to reinstall that older version. This is a problem because major Steinberg versions are paid upgrades (while minor upgrades are free). Major versions are usually released every 12-18 months. I have two takeaways:

No, eLicenser is not just a dongle solution but also their first iteration of software-based licensing, which they have replaced with some new crap. If you are running a Cubase version that is a couple of years old and were previously registering it through the soft eLicenser, this copy of Cubase will stop working as soon as you want to activate it on a new computer.

I "own" some older Steinberg software that I have no intention of upgrading, and as a result I will no longer be able to rely on its software-based licensing, as any breakdown of my computer could mean that I will be without a license. There is the possibility of transferring this license to a dongle, which will keep me going until that dongle breaks (which isn't unheard of) or gets lost.

Oh, it's even worse and more complicated than I thought. If they are breaking earlier versions of their non-dongle soft licensor then that's going to be a mess.

Frankly, as a long-time, non-professional user of Cubase, if they make using it any more annoying than it already was, when it comes time I need to do a major upgrade, I'll probably just move on to one of the new competing platforms instead. And, for me, it's not even about the cost. Beyond a certain point, the constant low-level annoyance of such invasive DRM measures on legit users just isn't worth it if you're not being paid to use it.

>most active users do upgrade their versions from time to time

Even if everyone were able to stay up to date, how about compatibility when needing to open old project files? Friends have told me stories about needing to source earlier versions of audio software to do so, especially when plugins are involved.

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