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."
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.
If I had a nickel…
Why am I not surprised they didn’t get a license
Why am I not surprised they didn’t get a license
Why am I not surprised they went ahead without even asking to get a license?
This company sounds like a mess.
Solid phone cases, though.
Nah not really. Had one for my oneplus6 and it literally fell apart after 1 year. Still have the value of it in store credit. Have not had anything from them I wanted to buy for years though. Mostly because I stopped buying mainstream devices (too expensive for the fuckall you get).
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.
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?”
There is no need to ask for permission, if you can simply pray. It’s an old trick and sometimes it even works.
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.
Dbrand and not getting a license name a better duo
Sucks… good on D-brand for handling it with class though.
It’s cool that they copped to it as well as they did. I wouldn’t have expected that.
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.
Why not ask for permission before you try to create it? It’s one of the few corporations where you can simply write a email to the CEO. Going ahead without permission is really shady.
I know, right? Do the render, send it to Valve, get licensed…
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
Just make Frank face plates. Surely nothing will go wrong.
… then incinerated our shot at bringing it to market.
Did they also incinerate all the Companion Cubes they already made?
What is it, just a case for it? Does it provide any functionality, or is it purely aesthetic?
Honestly if they just called it something else there wouldn’t be an issue, right? Just call it some other type of cube and in the description list the compatible hardware, which is just the steam machine.
Not sure why Valve would care so much, as it’s not like this would take away from their sales. I’m guessing it’s mainly a representation thing. They don’t want to allow a precedent where anyone can use their product’s name in an unofficial capacity, where their company’s reputation might be affected by consumers not realizing there’s no affiliation
deleted by creator
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.
Shooting from the hip: The enclosure could have been a thermal nightmare that valve didn’t want their name on.
Based on this video, they neglected to do something as basic as an air filter. I doubt thermals are top of mind for them:
I mean it’s already throttled so much if anything Valve was over concerned with thermals. But yea, I could see the modding aspect making things even worse.
While Valve didn’t do anything wrong from a legal standpoint here, I still think that’s not very sporting of them.
The biggest mistake Valve made was not shutting it down when it was announced.
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:
