What just happened? Dbrand, the peripheral company that loves controversy, has found itself in trouble again. This time, it's over the Steam Machine Companion Cube. While the $99 Portal 2 case certainly looked impressive, the fact that Dbrand never asked for permission to use the IP led to a legal threat from Valve. As a result, the case is now canceled and buyers are being refunded.
Dbrand admitted in a post that it never asked for a license from Valve to make the Companion Cube, a decision it expects to regret for a long time.
The company says that thousands of hours of work went into creating, engineering, and building the enclosure. Forty-four sets of injection molding tools were developed, one for each of the cube's subcomponents. The entire product was redesigned from scratch more than once, just to get the way it cradles the console exactly right. Debrand was even willing to take a loss on every $99 cube sold as the product had become a passion project for the organization.
RIP Companion Cube
by u/dbrand in dbrand
"Unfortunately, being proud of the thing we made did not give us the right to make it," Dbrand wrote.
When it launched on June 22, the cube became Dbrand's second-fastest-selling product ever – only the Switch 2 Killswitch case outperformed it. Unfortunately, that's when Valve's legal team made contact.
Valve's lawyers pointed out that the Companion Cube is the firm's intellectual property, for which Dbrand does not have a license, and asked for the product and launch film to be taken down immediately.
Dbrand agreed and fully admits it was wrong. It even tried to license the project at this late stage but Valve said no. "Given our backwards approach of building first and asking permission later, it was a fair answer," it wrote.
The Steam Machine Companion Cube has now been erased from Dbrand's website and social feeds. Buyers are being refunded and will receive their money back by the end of the week.
Dbrand said that Valve was direct, fair, and respectful throughout, which aren't the sort of terms it often uses when it gets caught up in these sorts of legal wrangles.
Back in 2021, Dbrand told Sony to "go ahead, sue us" over the matte black faceplates for the PS5 that gave the console a more classic PlayStation look. Sony threatened to do exactly that, and the plates were removed from sale. But Dbrand responded with a new design, quipping "checkmate, lawyers."
Dbrand was more direct with its Zelda-clone decals for the Switch and Steam Deck. Its message to Nintendo was "Go fu*k yourself lawyers." There was also the decals' website's description heading that read, "The Power of Plagiarism."