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."
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.
Would you want to have a business relationship with someone with a “do things first, ask for permission after” attitude?
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
It wouldn’t set a legal precedent. Valve would still be well within their rights to shut down any other products that did something similar. If they signed a license agreement now everything would be fine and above board, and valve would still be able to do this exact thing to any other brands who did the same thing if they so chose.
I think they just meant precedent, like it sets an example of how they treat copyright infringement.
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:
https://youtu.be/glXA3ObwSwQ
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.
If you let me put my tinfoil hat on for a moment, it may be because now they can gauge the community response and decide if they want to launch their own or “change their mind” and look like the good guys
Then let them play off of what Beetschnapps said and back room ask Dbrand to fire off sets for them to test for thermal issues then if it doesn’t need any modifications come out swinging. Valve gets more money and looks like real aces.