Accessory maker dbrand has yanked its Steam Machine Companion Cube enclosure from the market and begun issuing refunds after realizing it never secured permission from Valve to produce the product. The cancellation took effect immediately, with the company posting a detailed mea culpa on Reddit acknowledging the misstep.
The product became dbrand's second-fastest-selling item when pre-orders opened last week. The enclosure, styled after the iconic cube from Portal, was designed to house the newly announced Steam Machine hybrid device. The company poured what it described as thousands of hours into perfecting the accessory, redesigning it multiple times to ensure it fit the Valve hardware seamlessly.
Despite the effort and early momentum, dbrand never obtained a license to use Valve's intellectual property. The company acknowledged this plainly in its statement: "We built the idea into something real without ever asking Valve if we could."
Valve reached out to dbrand last week with a straightforward request. The company owns the Companion Cube trademark and the Portal franchise, and dbrand lacked any license to manufacture products based on them. Valve asked the accessory maker to remove the product and halt promotion. Dbrand appealed, hoping to negotiate a properly licensed version, but Valve declined.
"Given our backwards approach of building first and asking permission later, it was a fair answer," dbrand wrote. The company set the Poverty Cube, as it was called, at a $99 price point but noted it would lose money on each sale. The passion project status did not change the legal reality.
Dbrand has scrubbed all mentions of the Companion Cube from its website and social channels. Former product pages now redirect to the Reddit post explaining the cancellation. Refunds began processing immediately, with the company asking customers to contact support if the money hasn't arrived within a week.
The statement included apologies to both customers and Valve, with dbrand explicitly stating that the game maker "didn't do anything wrong here" and that "they alone get to decide how it's used." The episode serves as a public lesson in securing rights before launching a product, no matter how much internal enthusiasm surrounds it.
Author Emily Chen: "It's a brutal own-goal by dbrand, but the upfront contrition and swift action beat the alternative of a drawn-out legal standoff."
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