Hello,
The 21st century, software companies are protecting their investment with online check. Basically, it is the same as a dongle, but the check is done online. No dongle, no soft key required, device independent.
However, this means two drawbacks: 1) no internet connection = no use; and 2) there’s a “big brother” knowing what you are doing, when, where… and after a while it evolves to a new licensing scheme: no purchase anymore, but subscriptions only, or pay per use.
Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, etc. all major software editors take this direction.
Some users start to realise that new licensing model costs a lot more to customers, generating debts: you cannot invest and buy a software, you need to pay each month/year. If you stop at anytime, you cannot use it anymore. Moreover, the next step is to put your work in the cloud. Bound by the hands and feet, you cannot leave anymore.
One day, more people will realise how this is jeopadising our individual liberties.
Personally, what I would expect from steinberg, is to give the choice to the customer, enabling 3 locations for our licence: computer, dongle, or online cloud. With possibility to move the key from one to the other. And in most cases, I’ll use the dongle, even if it is annoying, I understand it is because otherwise too many people would steal the software, and they would have to increase prices to cover this loss.
I like the way they opened this forum to get customer input, and I would be very interested to a beta testing (not or not only to test license keys 
).
Greetings,
Frederic.