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."
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).
Ayyyy at least they didn’t blame the would be buyers
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.
Sometimes it’s best to ask for forgiveness rather than permission.
Ah, yes, the Christian way
Aka “buisness as usual”
tank you for spelling it rite
U wot mate
Also the Python way (programming language).
Also the python way (snakes)
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?
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.
Dbrand and not getting a license name a better duo
Sucks… good on D-brand for handling it with class though.
Yeah, nice to see companies taking ownership of mistakes. Shame they didn’t ask first.
Look at Dbrand’s history before giving them any sympathy. Thanks to @woelkchen@lemmy.world for pointing it out.
Handling with class? They just tried to get away with something that clearly doesn’t work that way. You don’t make a product based on a known franchise without contacting the franchise owner about it.
Remember that guy who tried to Kickstart a Game of Thrones card game?
https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/bm81ez/kickstarter_man_launches_a_hilariously_bad/
Ouch… Getting injection moulds made is really REALLY pricey. That’s an expensive lesson.
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.
You forget, many of the target audience also celebrate copyright infringement as a virtue.
Yeah, I’m seriously wondering how you get to that point without making sure you’re allowed to do the thing. Injection molding is a fuck ton of principal that you make up for in volume.
Prefacing this by saying I know nothing about injection moulding. Couldn’t they still use the molds for when they do get a license just different designs?
for when they do get a license
We asked Valve whether there was any way to keep the project alive: properly licensed, with their blessing, on their terms. They said no.
Valve’s refused to sell them a licence.
There is no ‘when they do get a license’.
Beg forgiveness instead of ask for permission is a gamble. dBrand lost the dice roll.
They might be able to modify the molds to something legally distinct, but it’d be expensive and if they were already taking a loss on the desirable product it’s better to not throw bad money after good. I’d guess their actual best bet is to see if valve wants to buy all this off them to reduce their losses and their disposal/storage costs
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.
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
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.
What happened before? I only know them from the LTT memes
Edit: nvm, read the other comments
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.
The real answer is boring. Think about the legal precedent that would be set, this would be seen as condoning anyone to go out, market and accept money for a representation of their IP without asking for permission beforehand, no legal team worth their salt is going to allow that. They don’t want to reward someone for doing things the wrong way from a legal standpoint. There’s also probably a potential fraud liability here, the same way trademark owners are required to legally pursue copycat brands to prevent customers from being defrauded
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.
Would you want to have a business relationship with someone with a “do things first, ask for permission after” attitude?
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
Well that was dumb. But their handling of the fallout means I can point and laugh but also not feel any hesitation to buy other stuff from them if they release stuff I want.
Their whole Ghost case debacle, which I did buy into, was similarly handled well, I’ve been happy with the free replacement I got from them for that and it’s been working great for a few years now.
Dumbasses. But refunding and owning up is commendable, at least it seems to be from how they’ve framed it all.
I wonder how much they’ve lost in total. So many hours, injection molds, and presumably good chunk of the production. Surprisingly careless!
They mentioned they had 15,000 people sign up on day 1. With a $100 and a $130 option.
Let’s say 80% picked the $130 choice and 20% the $100 choice:
15,000 * .80 * $130 = $1,560,000
15,000 * .20 * $100 = $300,000And that’s just day 1. They had 7 months of sign ups before ordering started.
Edit: According to this site they had over 100,000 orders:
https://www.engadget.com/2204117/dbrand-companion-cube-case-for-the-steam-machine-was-a-lie/
100,000 * .80 * $130 = $10,400,000
100,000 * .20 * $100 = $2,000,000So about 12.5 million in lost revenue not counting the engineering hours, prototyping, injection molding, etc. etc.
Could be $15 million total. Dumbasses!
Further proof that the D in Dbrand stands for “douchey.”
That sucks
Wonder if they’ll release the CAD files?
The unlicenced copyright and trademark violating cad files?
The copyright offense was trying to sell the thing.
Not a lawyer
That is wholly incorrect. Any reproduction of IP would violate copyright, money changing hands has no bearing at all.
