Cubase on Steam instead of dongle

I think it would be great if Cubase was available on Steam and used that as the DRM instead of a dongle. Many DAWs are becoming available on Steam. I personally hate the dongle haha… extra thing to carry around, takes a USB slot, etc.

Maybe this is something Steinberg could look into? What do you guys think?

Back in the day I always swore I’d never get ilok protected plugins. The wrapper bloats the plugins’ memory consumption and consumes unnecessary CPU, slows load times, etc. Then I bought the Soundtoys bundle and many others. Just became normal.

Then I swore I’d never use anything that required a dongle. And I got Cubase.

Neither were as bad as I thought before I used them. I don’t love the dongle, but I assume Steam would require you to be online, right? That sounds awful.

This last year I have had so many problems with elicenser. In addition, where you have programs like Studio One and Logic giving out either multiple licenses or at least the ability to be used on multiple computers at the same time, it makes it much nicer when I need to edit something on my laptop from home or when I am away. I can’t always predict when I need to take the dongle around with me and also risk it getting damaged. Please find a new way Steinberg. Its not like the elicenser benefits anything from a pirating perspective. Cubase is one of the easiest programs to find a crack for sadly.

That’s inaccurate. Cubase Pro hasn’t been cracked since version 5. And plugins protected by soft e-licenser, and even I believe Cubase and Wavelab Elements were cracked. The dongle is sadly the only thing standing between Cubase and a million warez users.

I think a fair compromise would be to allow multiple dongles/licenses. Almost every Ilok protected developer offers two to three activations. Cubase is already one of the last standing uncracked programs, and we live with the nuisance of a dongle because of it. How about a bit of give and take, Steinberg?

Steam? You want to carry a console around? :mrgreen:
I chose an elicenser anytime
Also Cubase needs to remain uncracked, usb elicenser is a proven solution

There are no professional DAWs on Steam, just toys.

Please don’t treat your DAW as an online game :wink:

+1. Yes Cubase on Steam! For the price of 3D shooters! :laughing:

I had an annoying and persistent bug with the dongle software. Support fixed it with a patch. Don’t like it. There is no excuse for this. I worry about it getting broken or stolen. Not sure Steam is the solution.

Nah, you need to be online to purchase it of course, but after that the credentials are saved to your computer so you can run the software without being online. Same way the current eLicenser works basically… you need to go online to first set it up but after that you are good.

Steam is just software on your computer, no different than the eLicenser software we already have to install.

Cakewalk SONAR is on Steam.

I said professional DAW, not an audio and MIDI editor that’s still stuck in the mid-2000s and is apparently only used by cowboy hat-wearing white americans in their 50s and kids who thought that it was developed by Roland.

So very wrong, there has not been a cracked full version of Cubase since 2009 so that’s 7 years. I would say that’s pretty damn good for copy protection.

Steam on the other hand has everything available cracked I believe.

I actually like the dongle as I have Cubase on my PC in the music room (spare room) and my laptop for sitting downstairs watching the telly and editing stuff plus on my nephews Mac and all I need to do is plug the dongle into the usb slot on any of those computers for Cubase to work.

The one thing I do think though, as Cubase is very much protected it would be a fair option to allow genuine users to have a couple of activations possible similar to other DAWS. I often work with my nephew on projects and as we live far away it would be great to be able to send files that we could both be able to audition and edit within Cubase without having to travel to each other for the one dongle.

All the nay-sayers!
I think the point they miss is that Steam is just a deployment platform, the rest is irrelevant to whether or not you play games. Do you play games? Yes, then good. Cubase really is a creative platform for all kinds of media, not soley mixing duties for studios. More money, more updates etc.