I just got an email from dBrand cancelling the Steam Machine companion cube shell.
They posted the rationale on reddit, /r/dBrand but for the good folks who don’t do reddit anymore, here’s their post:
"RIP Companion Cube
🚨 Announcement 🚨
As you’ve probably noticed, the Steam Machine Companion Cube was eviscerated from our website, YouTube, and other social media platforms last week.
The blunt version is that we made the Companion Cube without a license from Valve. Everyone who purchased a Companion Cube will have their refund issued by end-of-day. Everything else beyond this is just detail. If you want the full story, keep reading.
On November 12th 2025, the day the Steam Machine was announced, we put up a concept render and sign-up page to see if anyone would be interested in a Companion Cube enclosure. It went moderately viral, with over fifteen thousand people signing up to be notified in the first day. In the months that followed, we built the idea into something real without ever asking Valve if we could.
We’re going to regret that decision for a very long time.
Over the next seven months, we poured our souls into this project. More than a thousand hours went into engineering from our industrial design team. Forty-four sets of injection molding tools were developed, one for each of the cube’s sub-components. The entire product was redesigned from scratch more than once, just to get the way it cradles the console exactly right. We literally rented out a university campus to film the launch video. By the end, we were losing money on every $99 Poverty Cube sold, but it didn’t matter. This had turned into a passion project for the entire organization.
Unfortunately, being proud of the thing we made did not give us the right to make it.
We launched around 3am on Monday, June 22nd. Overnight, it became the second-fastest selling product in our 15-year history, behind only the Switch 2 Killswitch.
Shortly after, Valve’s legal team reached out. They stated that the Companion Cube is Valve intellectual property, for which dbrand does not have a license. They requested we take down the product and launch film immediately. This was entirely within their rights, and they were direct, fair, and respectful throughout.
We took everything down and made an appeal. We asked Valve whether there was any way to keep the project alive: properly licensed, with their blessing, on their terms. They said no. Given our backwards approach of building first and asking permission later, it was a fair answer.
That’s basically the whole story. We made something a lot of people were excited about, then incinerated our shot at bringing it to market. It’s a hard lesson to learn publicly.
It goes without saying, but we’ll say it regardless: Valve didn’t do anything wrong here. They built a game franchise a lot of people love and they alone get to decide how it’s used.
To everyone who was as excited about this project as we were: thank you, and sorry. Refunds are being issued today. If it hasn’t landed in your account by the end of this week, you know how to reach us.
To Valve: thank you for Portal, and sorry for the headache. We should’ve asked first."
While Valve didn’t do anything wrong from a legal standpoint here, I still think that’s not very sporting of them.
Good graces only go so far. Dbrand has unfortunately done this before and didn’t learn their lesson, no reason to play ball with them.
On the other hand, it was a cool product that many people would have enjoyed. And now it’s gone.
And I bet it could have gone quite smoothly if Dbrand had bothered to contact Valve before making it.
I’m not in any way saying that they shouldn’t have done that.
OK. It’s still entirely their fault.
They caught a company stealing their intellectual property and lying to consumers that they had permission to create a product and fulfill orders as a result of that theft, and promptly shut their bullshit down. While I’m not a big fan of some IP laws and how they can be abused, I’m struggling to see how you think Valve deserves any reproach for this. This isn’t even the first time this company has tried this shit and been slapped for it. At this point its a pattern of behavior that implies they are intentionally trying to steal and scam.
Look at Dbrand’s history before condemning Valve. Thanks to @woelkchen@lemmy.world for pointing it out.
I said “not very sporting”. That’s hardly a condemnation.
Well, the sport you are talking about is seeing how much you can steal and get away with. So…
The biggest mistake Valve made was not shutting it down when it was announced.
Maybe it was on purpose to stick it to dbrand and their questionable history of licensing
Fair play though, it is pretty funny that they let DBrand spend all that money first.
i won’t fault valve’s IP infringement team for missing one infringing product in a sea of [i’m not bothering to estimate] infringing products
it’s the fact that it’s a companion cube [valve™] for a valve [valve™] video game [valve™] console [valve™] being made by notvalve™. if it was just a t-shirt on redbubble they could probably fly under the radar, but this is too close to confusing the consumer. like, how many people here automatically assumed they had valve’s permission? which would imply some sort of partnership with valve, just by making the faceplates?
ideally that’s the kind of confusion IP law is supposed to prevent. how it’s used vs how it was intended is another can of worms (and idealism versus pragmatism is a fun argument don’t get me wrong) but we can pretend for a little bit.
like, there’s Coke trademarked to Coca Cola. no other soda or drink gets it. But in smelting and ironworks? There are a ton of coke companies. Because coke isn’t soda in smelting. There’s no confusion.
I definitely assumed some kind of partnership, especially after watching the launch video where they claimed Aperture Science had been bought by dBrand.
Why yes, yes it has already been re-uploaded to YouTube:
https://youtu.be/DfITSn5pcrQ