- Dbrand made a Companion Cube case for the Steam Machine
- It was an homage to the Companion Cube from Portal and a popular idea
- Unfortunately, Dbrand went ahead and made this product without any permission from Valve, and therefore had to withdraw it from sale today
Dbrand has announced that their Steam Machine smart case, which made Valve’s gaming PC look like a Companion Cube from Portal, has been withdrawn from sale.
Why? Because, rather unbelievably, as Dbrand explained on Reddit, it didn’t ask permission from Valve to make and sell this creation.
Dbrand said: “We launched around 3am on Monday 22nd June. Overnight it became [the Companion Cube case] became the second fastest selling product in our 15-year history, behind only Switch 2 Killswitch.”
“Shortly after, Valve’s legal team reached out. They stated that the Companion Cube is Valve intellectual property that Dbrand does not have a license to. They requested that we remove the product and release the film immediately. This was completely within their rights and they were direct, fair and respectful throughout.”
Dbrand complied, launching an appeal to Valve to see if there was “a way to keep the project alive: properly licensed, with their blessing, on their terms”.
The short answer was no, although Dbrand admits, “With our backwards approach of building first and asking permission later, it was a reasonable answer.”
And that’s the story of a $130 ($99 for the ‘poverty version’) hard-shell Steam Machine case that was never meant to be. Refunds will be issued today, June 29, 2026, for anyone who ordered a Companion Cube case.
Analysis: permission denied
This whole episode is suitably confusing considering Dbrand apparently spent more than a thousand hours of engineering crafting the Companion Cube, ensuring the Steam Machine fits perfectly into it, and developing 44 sets of injection molding tools in the process. Not to mention renting a university campus as a setting for the launch video.
Dbrand says, “In the end, we lost money on every $99 Poverty Cube sold, but it didn’t matter. This had become a passion project for the entire organization.”
As you can imagine, there are many confused (or actually amused) gamers on the Reddit thread calling Dbrand stupid, which the company freely admits is true. One Redditor says, “You had two jobs! Ask Valve and make the case.”
Another asks: “How on earth did you think you’d be able to sell this thing without getting permission from Valve…???”
Well, yes. That’s a good point. Some argue that Dbrand might have built up some publicity and shown all the pre-orders to persuade Valve to be more likely to say yes, but that theory falls apart because the company forgot to ask Valve – at all.
Amidst the (rightfully) withered criticism are more than a few disappointed gamers who are actually canceling their Steam Machine (they say) because they won’t be able to fit the gaming PC into Dbrand’s case.
It’s a subjective matter of course, but I can’t see the appeal at all personally. The Companion Cube made the Steam machine quite a bit thicker (when the idea is that it’s a low-profile, unobtrusive living room PC), and while by all accounts it was very nicely made, it pushed the price up even more. And while ventilation is obviously factored into the design, I wonder about the effect on the Steam Machine’s cooling system on a hot day.
Still, these are all moot points now. Dbrand said this is a “tough lesson to learn publicly” and hopefully the company will take it to heart. However, it is not the first time that a Dbrand product has gone off the rails in this way. You may recall that Sony sent a cease and desist letter canceling Dbrand’s ‘Darkplates’ (faceplates for PS5) due to the way they copied a “proprietary product design”. A Darkplates version 2.0 was released with changes to address this, and it remains on sale today.
When Darkplates was first revealed by Dbrand, it was with the prescient slogan ‘Go ahead, sue us’, so you have to wonder if this particular lesson from Valve is going to stick.
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