Steam Machine Companion Cube case cancelled because Dbrand didn't ask Valve for permission to make it: 'We’re going to regret that decision for a very long time'

Back in November 2025, Dbrand teased a Portal Companion Cube case for the Steam Machine, and while the initial render wasn't great, the underlying idea was so good that PC Gamer hardware editor Andy Edser declared, "You have to make it now, no takesie-backsies." Sorry, other Andy, but I'm afraid the takesie-backsies are on, as Dbrand has pulled the plug and scrubbed all trace of its existence from the internet.

The reason for the sudden turnabout is quite simple: Dbrand, uhh, made the cube without Valve's permission.

"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," Dbrand wrote on Reddit. "It went moderately viral, with over 15,000 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.

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"We’re going to regret that decision for a very long time."

(Image credit: Dbrand)

Dbrand said it put "more than a thousand hours" into engineering the project, with multiple redesigns and sets of injection tools involved created to support it, and even rented out a university campus to film the cube's 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."

When sales for the Companion Cube case launched, it became the second-fastest selling in Dbrand's history. It also came to the attention of Valve, which is where things went very wrong: Valve's legal team contacted Dbrand to remind it that the Companion Cube is Valve's property, to which Dbrand did not have a license, and thus requested it all be taken down immediately.

Valve was "direct, fair, and respectful throughout," Dbrand said, but it also rejected the company's request for a second chance, with proper licenses in place and entirely on Valve's terms. To its credit, Dbrand said the rejection "was a fair answer," given the "backwards approach of building first and asking permission later" it had initially taken.

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In fact, Dbrand took pains to be clear that Valve was entirely in the right on this one: "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."

This one really sucks. The Steam Machine is literally a cube, and the Portal Companion Cube is one of the most famous cubes in the world—certainly the most famous cube in videogames. (At least for now). It's such an obvious match, it's weird to me that Valve isn't selling Steam Machines wrapped up in Companion Cube cases by default. Which leads to the obvious question that has us all briefly indulging our inner William Hurt: How do you screw that up?

What might have been. (Image credit: Dbrand)

Valve might have refused to license the cube to Dbrand anyway, especially if it's planning some sort of cube case of its own—not a bad bet, and for the moment the only hope that excited Dbrand cube supporters have left. And yes, I have reached out to Valve to ask about its own potential plans for a home-grown Steam Machine Companion Cube—after all, that'd be a very good reason for refusing to give Dbrand a second chance at making it happen.

Regardless of Valve's intent, pitching the idea up front would've at the very least eliminated the hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars that Dbrand poured into this project, all of which are now just lost. It's such a huge unforced error, it'd almost be funny if it didn't mean that an extremely cool accessory for one of the biggest PC hardware releases in ages is toast—not to mention the potential long-term damage it's done to Dbrand's financial situation.

Dbrand is handling the cleanup with as much grace as anyone could reasonably ask for, apologizing to fans and Valve alike. But seeing all that excitement and hype built up over months—knowing you've got a real banger on your hands and sinking the resources into pulling it off—go up in smoke because you forgot to do the obvious super-important step one of the process, man, that's gotta hurt.