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."

Sucks… good on D-brand for handling it with class though.

Why am I not surprised they didn't get a license

Yeah, nice to see companies taking ownership of mistakes. Shame they didn't ask first.

Dbrand and not getting a license name a better duo

That sucks

Wonder if they’ll release the CAD files?

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?

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.

That is one of the best and probably Most sincere apologies I’ve ever heard from a company. Sucks for the product, but those guys seem to be all right

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.

Ouch... Getting injection moulds made is really REALLY pricey. That's an expensive lesson.

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?"

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.

While Valve didn't do anything wrong from a legal standpoint here, I still think that's not very sporting of them.

This is a pattern for this company. The "apology" is marketing bullshit. This company is run by pure assholes - which I'll admit is hardly unusual, but don't let them manipulate you with reality distortion techniques. They've done it before, they did it here, and they'll do it again. "Fool me once," and all that.

Look at Dbrand's history before condemning Valve. Thanks to @woelkchen@lemmy.world for pointing it out.

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

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

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.

Look at Dbrand's history before giving them any sympathy. Thanks to @woelkchen@lemmy.world for pointing it out.

The biggest mistake Valve made was not shutting it down when it was announced.

I said "not very sporting". That's hardly a condemnation.

What happened before? I only know them from the LTT memes

Edit: nvm, read the other comments

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.

On the other hand, it was a cool product that many people would have enjoyed. And now it's gone.

This company sounds like a mess.

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.

Maybe it was on purpose to stick it to dbrand and their questionable history of licensing

Idiots.

Just make Frank face plates. Surely nothing will go wrong.

Sometimes it's best to ask for forgiveness rather than permission.

Ah, yes, the Christian way

And I bet it could have gone quite smoothly if Dbrand had bothered to contact Valve before making it.

Release it as 3d printing templates open source 🙌

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.

I'm not in any way saying that they shouldn't have done that.

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?

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.

Well, the sport you are talking about is seeing how much you can steal and get away with. So…

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

OK. It's still entirely their fault.

Fair play though, it is pretty funny that they let DBrand spend all that money first.

The unlicenced copyright and trademark violating cad files?

Aka "buisness as usual"

Except Sony wants PC gamers to eat shit and expects them to buy their $1,000 console for PC quality games now. They would definitely not agree to that

They would definitely not agree to that

dbrand wouldn't ask them – as usual

😅 oh shit of course they wouldn't

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.

tank you for spelling it rite

You forget, many of the target audience also celebrate copyright infringement as a virtue.

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.

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.