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."
(X) Doubt
I have a hard time believing this wasn’t intentional. I don’t think I understand what the end goal was supposed to be, but in no way do I accept that this wasn’t 100% the expected ending to this project. dBrand aren’t a new or inexperienced company, and this isn’t their first time making licensed products. They literally know how to do this better than most others in their field. There is zero chance that they went this far into development without ever clearing it with Valve. Or if they did, then they had to have done it knowing Valve was going to shut it down, because I can guarantee you that there isn’t a single person in dBrand’s leadership who couldn’t have predicted this outcome.
It makes me wonder if dBrand is being honest about how much time and resources were lost on this project. Because that’s sounding like a very large loss to claim for a mistake this company is too experienced to be making in the first place.
They have 15k email addresses expressing interest in the cube. They will make something that skirts the IP and allow you to ‘customize’ it with your own 3d printed part. Thats my guess.