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."

  • mrmaplebar@fedia.io
    39·
    2 小时前

    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?

  • Mearcfara@lemmy.ml
    11·
    2 小时前

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

    • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      15 分钟前

      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.

  • Err(()).unwrap()@lemmy.world
    115·
    4 小时前

    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
      7·
      2 小时前

      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
    76·
    4 小时前

    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
      21·
      3 小时前

      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
      37·
      4 小时前

      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
        14·
        3 小时前

        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
    48·
    4 小时前

    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
      16·
      3 小时前

      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
    9·
    3 小时前

    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

  • Juviz@lemmy.zipEnglish
    15·
    4 小时前

    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

    • WhoIzDisIz@lemmy.today
      35·
      4 小时前

      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.

      • Juviz@lemmy.zipEnglish
        7·
        3 小时前

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

        Edit: nvm, read the other comments