{"id":734268,"date":"2026-06-30T05:46:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T05:46:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/734268\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T05:46:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T05:46:17","slug":"dbrand-forced-to-pull-steam-machine-companion-cube","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/734268\/","title":{"rendered":"Dbrand Forced To Pull Steam Machine Companion Cube"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mere after the reveal of the Valve Steam Machine<\/a>, accessory maker Dbrand announced that it was releasing the “Companion Cube,” a Steam Machine accessory that was modelled after the Portal weighted companion cube storage box. Following massive interest in the Companion Cube in the week since its announcement, Dbrand announced that it has been forced by Valve to pull the product from its website and social media pages, despite Dbrand’s efforts to retroactively seek licensing rights from Valve in response to the takedown notice. Dbrand has complied and wiped the Companion Cube from its online presence, redirecting the product page link to a Reddit post<\/a> explaining the situation, but fortunately the original product page had been archived before the Companion Cube’s untimely demise. Dbrand will also be issuing refunds to anyone who purchased the Companion Cube. <\/p>\n

Dbrand explained in the post on r\/Dbrand on Reddit that it was contacted by Valve’s legal team and informed that the Companion Cube was Valve’s intellectual property and that the accessory maker did not have license to use the IP in such a capacity. According to Dbrand, the Companion Cube was the culmination of seven months and over a thousand hours of engineering work that resulted in four sets of injection molds being produced. The Companion Cube was reportedly Dbrand’s second-fastest-selling product to date behind the Switch 2 Killswitch, and fans of the design have expressed both disappointment in Dbrand for not approaching Valve and licensing the product correctly and understanding that Valve may not want its brand attached to a product whose engineering and thermal qualities cannot necessarily be verified.<\/p>\n

\"\"\/<\/a> The full statement by Dbrand reads as follows:As you’ve probably noticed, the Steam Machine Companion Cube was eviscerated from our website, YouTube, and other social media platforms last week.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

We’re going to regret that decision for a very long time.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, being proud of the thing we made did not give us the right to make it.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

To Valve: thank you for Portal, and sorry for the headache. We should’ve asked first.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mere after the reveal of the Valve Steam Machine, accessory maker Dbrand announced that it was releasing the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":734269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[74],"class_list":["post-734268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/734269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}