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Steinberg Elicensor to close 2025

Hopefully they will offer Crossgrade pricing to those as it would be perverse to exclude them seeing as DAWs from other manufacturers are accepted.
I would hope so too, but given that the upgrade pricing is so much cheaper, I might suggest that anybody who may want to upgrade Cubase at some point in the future should upgrade to one of the Steinberg Licensing versions (12 or 13) prior to the March 2025 sunset date, so that they won't lose out on the upgrade pricing.
 
I am happy to be out of the Steinberg ecosystem. My investment in Cubase and Groove Agent proved to be money down the drain and a ticking timebomb. If I were a composer working in film and making my way towards Nuendo, I would need something as big as Cubase, but for what I do, the other competing DAW I use pretty much does the exact same thing, but offers some interesting new alternatives and possibilities as they are features that are normally just used in electronic music. But some interesting things can be done with them in the workflow when making more traditional music genre.
 
Yeah.. the issue is that when you buy an upgrade for Cubase (ex. Cubase 12 or 13), if you are upgrading from eLicenser to the newer licensing, it has to connect to the eLicenser service to see that you own the product and mark the eLicenser license as "Upgraded" to prevent someone from upgrading the same license a second time. Once the eLicenser service is shut down in March 2025, the system is no longer able to verify that you own an older Cubase version and is no longer able to mark your eLicenser license as "Upgraded", so you just can't upgrade it anymore at all.

I suspect there are going to be some upset people who don't realize this, sail past the March deadline, and then want to upgrade to Cubase 14 or 15 or something later and would be told they have to buy a new full license.
By extension, I presume if you have an older version of WaveLab or any other legacy versions of Steinberg apps, you would have to follow the same thinking?

Thanks for the heads up on this.
 
I would hope so too, but given that the upgrade pricing is so much cheaper, I might suggest that anybody who may want to upgrade Cubase at some point in the future should upgrade to one of the Steinberg Licensing versions (12 or 13) prior to the March 2025 sunset date, so that they won't lose out on the upgrade pricing.
We've already established that. :thumbsup:
I'm adding that I hope that PAST the cut-off date, they offer the old timers that missed the Upgrade boat, some kind of deal as they do for crossgrades.
It's fairly easy to get a crossgrade deal so hopefully they can work something out.
Otherwise, if starting from scratch, it would be cheaper to purchase another DAW on the crossgrade list via a transfer and sell it on after you have claimed the crossgrade.
At least the crossgrade is fairly cheap during sales.
 
There's a bigger concern than this, which I don't think many people realize.

If you stay on Cubase 10 past March 2025, you won't be eligible for upgrade pricing anymore. So if you did want to upgrade to Cubase 14 later or whatever, it would be a new purchase and you would pay full price as though you didn't own any version of Cubase before. You'd be stuck on Cubase 10 forever, unless you wanted to buy it again new.
Also Cubase can be installed on 3 machines. That's worthy of the upgrade price.
 
By extension, I presume if you have an older version of WaveLab or any other legacy versions of Steinberg apps, you would have to follow the same thinking?

Thanks for the heads up on this.
Yes. It applies equally to old versions of Wavelab, Dorico, etc.
 
Ok….so the new e-licenser is NOT iLok, or it IS iLok ?…….If it IS iLok, I’ll be looking for a new DAW..I don’t know why Steinberg can’t just let us that will not be upgrading to the newer versions of Cubase to run on the old e-licenser….It’s bad enough that we have to pay extra for an e-licenser so that THEIR software is protected, not to mention the cost of new versions of Cubase..It reminds me of another thread where a guy was ranting about, and quitting the Pro Tools ecosystem….
 
Ok….so the new e-licenser is NOT iLok, or it IS iLok ?…….If it IS iLok, I’ll be looking for a new DAW..I don’t know why Steinberg can’t just let us that will not be upgrading to the newer versions of Cubase to run on the old e-licenser….It’s bad enough that we have to pay extra for an e-licenser so that THEIR software is protected, not to mention the cost of new versions of Cubase..It reminds me of another thread where a guy was ranting about, and quitting the Pro Tools ecosystem….
It's not iLok, it's their own system and works online. I'm not even sure they have a dongle anymore..
 
and so far, it's a major PITA and keeps buggin' out.
How so? Any specifics on problems with it? Might be something that can be solved.

I've had Cubase, Nuendo, Dorico, Spectralayers, and SB sound libraries on the new system for a while and haven't had a single problem. I'm no fan of copy protection for software apps as they can and do sometimes impede usage by the customer, but this seems to be a decent system.
 
Oh dear, I only have it on Dorico and haven't had any issues on either my very old desktop or my Windows 11 laptop.
i am on a mac and use legacy Cubase 10. But I also use a bunch of their non legacy software and its been a PITA. checkout the issues on Steinberg forums. I still need to get around to get that new x-stream to work properly in the DAW. there seem to be major issues with their sounds library so far. i guess if you only use their new Cubase DAW, maybe things are better.
 
i am on a mac and use legacy Cubase 10. But I also use a bunch of their non legacy software and its been a PITA.
Yes, trying to maintain an old version with a deceased licensing system while using newer products with new licensing is going to be a problem. Unfortunately the only way to freeze your DAW at an older version and ensure stability and compatibiltiy, is to freeze everything else at that time as well - including the OS.

The only alternative is to upgrade, and yes, it can be a pain, and expensive. This is the modern software world we are stuck with, and OS devs are at the forefront of making life difficult for everyone else. For the most part, DAW developers seem to be doing the best they can to maintain backward compatibility while offering new features.
 
Software development is crazy expensive, and even only making things compatible with the latest OS and architecture changes is expensive and will make a company bleed money unless you cut off support for old software at some point. A few fun things that will need attention of devs in near future:

- Next year Windows 10 reaches end of life, and there are a lot of machines that are not able to upgrade to Windows 11. From this point on you have to get new hardware or disconnect the machine from the internet to be safe.
At this point many frameworks will stop supporting Win 10, and using an old version will lead to degraded experience on Win 11. Even eorse, if you are using cross-platform frameworks you might loose support for older MacOS versions as well.
- In a few weeks Windows ARM will launch. If you want to support this platform you have to update used frameworks, which can lead to compatibility loss with Win 10 and older MacOS versions.
- MacOS gets way too many breaking updates in short time-periods, and there are always customer who demand day one support since they can't wait a few weeks before installing these.
 
Yes, trying to maintain an old version with a deceased licensing system while using newer products with new licensing is going to be a problem. Unfortunately the only way to freeze your DAW at an older version and ensure stability and compatibiltiy, is to freeze everything else at that time as well - including the OS.

The only alternative is to upgrade, and yes, it can be a pain, and expensive. This is the modern software world we are stuck with, and OS devs are at the forefront of making life difficult for everyone else. For the most part, DAW developers seem to be doing the best they can to maintain backward compatibility while offering new features.
For me the issues have been ongoing with Groove Agent and new Halion Sonic which are not legacy yet. Until this is sorted out, I am not buying any more Steinberg products or expansions.
 
I tend to stick with working systems until forced to upgrade or update. Right now I’m on a 2019 iMac with Monterey and Cubase 10.52 on an elicensor…everything seems to be working well. I wonder what problems I’ll encounter when I’m forced to move to Steinberg’s new protection scheme.
 
I haven't had a single problem with their newer licensing. It works perfectly for me. It doesn't even have to phone home I believe, so it can run forever on a system that you don't want connected to the Internet.
 
Ok….so the new e-licenser is NOT iLok, or it IS iLok ?…….If it IS iLok, I’ll be looking for a new DAW..I don’t know why Steinberg can’t just let us that will not be upgrading to the newer versions of Cubase to run on the old e-licenser….It’s bad enough that we have to pay extra for an e-licenser so that THEIR software is protected, not to mention the cost of new versions of Cubase..It reminds me of another thread where a guy was ranting about, and quitting the Pro Tools ecosystem….
It is not iLok and it works perfectly fine offline. You just need to be online to activate the software but once its activated disconnect internet and you're good to go.
 
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