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.