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."

  • mlg@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    15 minutes ago

    Not that I want to give dbrand any credit but this also seems like a stupid move for Valve.

    Why didn’t they just offer a license agreement if dbrand was willing to accept?

    Seems like a missed opportunity which the steam machine desperately needs right now.

    Even dumber, you’ll probably be able to find this on ali express or temu in a couple of weeks after some chinese brands make knockoffs anyway.

    Unless they already had some poor history with dbrand, seems kind of off character for Valve.

  • mrmaplebar@fedia.io
    64·
    4 hours ago

    The blunt version is that we made the Companion Cube without a license from Valve.

    Well… that was pretty damn stupid, now wasn’t it? Were they under the impression that they could capitalize off of one of Valve’s biggest IPs without getting some kind of license or consent first? Who do they think they are, an AI company?

    • phonics@lemmy.world
      6·
      2 hours ago

      They did hold peoples money. If they invested it before returning it. They could have made a fair chunk of change. Perhaps that was the plan all along. Risky play though.

  • Mearcfara@lemmy.ml
    19·
    4 hours ago

    It’s cool that they copped to it as well as they did. I wouldn’t have expected that.

    • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      2 hours ago

      Yeah. This is the kind of response (as far as i can tell: open, honest) that makes me want to buy something from that company in the future. Like, you legitimately can’t buy this kind of public relations. It sucks for the business, but doing the right thing by your customers gets you repeat customers. You can’t get brand loyalty through a commercial.

  • Shatur@discuss.tchncs.de
    1·
    1 hour ago

    Strange that they did this after the price reveal. Could they have decided that it’s not very profitable and also realized that the case requires further adjustments (like it doesn’t fit or melts or something), and decided to cancel it entirely? LTT had a companion cube, but they never put it on the Steam Machine.

  • Err(()).unwrap()@lemmy.world
    138·
    6 hours ago

    That’s literally what happened with the black PS5 shells. They used Sony’s trademark without permission, got a cease and desist, and didn’t learn a fucking thing from it. I’m sure they had the best intentions, but doing it twice was monumentally stupid.

    • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
      15·
      4 hours ago

      Off-brand PS5 shells should have been fine, unless they were dumb enough to copy Sony’s logos and whatnot. It’s just swoopy inert shapes and it’s only designed to work with official hardware.

  • officermike@lemmy.world
    93·
    7 hours ago

    Did they not learn from the PS5 dark plates? Why do they keep developing things without licensing or approval from rights holders? This seems like an easy lesson to learn. I imagine the engineering time and injection molds cost them a huge chunk of cash.

    • MimicJar@lemmy.world
      23·
      5 hours ago

      Sometimes it’s best to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. They made a different dark plate later on that was different enough, they’ll do the same thing here. We’ll see “Friendly Cube” before the year is over.

      Plus huge marketing win. They probably got a bunch of new users to visit their website and saw a huge uptick in overall sales.

    • jordanlund@lemmy.worldOP
      43·
      6 hours ago

      You would think the people in charge of production would have pressed management on it:

      “Hey, did we get permission this time? Or is it the Dark Plates all over again?”

      • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
        13·
        6 hours ago

        There is no need to ask for permission, if you can simply pray. It’s an old trick and sometimes it even works.

  • Deconceptualist@leminal.space
    58·
    6 hours ago

    Y’know when this was first prototyped I considered asking whether was licensed, but thought, “Nah, dbrand wouldn’t be that stupid, I’m sure they worked it out with Valve”. Heh. Too much faith on my part I guess.

    • MyTurtleSwimsUpsideDown@fedia.io
      27·
      5 hours ago

      But really good marketing. They got the emails of a bunch of people interested in Steam hardware, they got their name out there to folks like me who’ve never heard of them. They put out a sincere sounding apology, gave automatic full refunds, and in 18 months I’ll probably remember them as a trustable brand but forget it was because they did a dumbass copyright infringement.

  • Vince@lemmy.world
    13·
    6 hours ago

    Lol, I half expect them to just recolor or reskin it and call it something else, maybe tack on an easily removed plastic piece to make it look very different. Then people can just buy and repaint it