Accessory maker dbrand has cancelled its much-hyped Companion Cube enclosure for the Steam Machine, refunding all customers after Valve confirmed the Portal-inspired product had been made without permission. The case, modelled on the Aperture Science Weighted Companion Cube from Valve's Portal series right down to its iconic heart insignia, vanished from dbrand's website, YouTube, and social channels within days of going on sale. The reason was simple and entirely self-inflicted: dbrand never secured a licence from Valve to use the design. Once Valve's lawyers got in touch, the project was effectively dead on arrival.
A Year in the Making, Gone in Days
What makes the cancellation sting is how much work went into something that was never cleared for release. The idea kicked off on November 12, 2025, the very day Valve revealed the Steam Machine, when dbrand posted a concept render and a sign-up page to gauge interest. The response was immediate, with over 15,000 people registering in the first 24 hours, giving the company every reason to push ahead. From there dbrand sank serious resources into it, reportedly more than a thousand hours of industrial-design engineering and 44 separate sets of injection-molding tools, one for each of the cube's sub-components, even redesigning the whole thing from scratch more than once to get the way it cradled the console exactly right. The product launched at around 3am on June 22 in two versions, a $130 standard edition and a stripped-down $99 "Poverty Cube," the latter sold at a loss, with the premium box opening into a full Portal test-chamber diorama. It promptly became the second-fastest-selling product in dbrand's 15-year history, trailing only its Switch 2 Killswitch.
Valve Played It Straight
Despite the dramatic framing the situation invites, Valve's intervention was reportedly measured rather than aggressive. According to dbrand, Valve's legal team simply reached out, stated plainly that the Companion Cube is Valve intellectual property for which dbrand held no licence, and requested the product and its launch film be taken down immediately. dbrand was unusually candid in describing Valve as "direct, fair, and respectful throughout," and complied at once, wiping the product from every platform. The company then appealed, asking whether the project could continue as a properly licensed, Valve-blessed accessory on Valve's own terms. Valve declined. As dbrand itself conceded, "given our backwards approach of building first and asking permission later, it was a fair answer," and the company went further still, stating outright that "Valve didn't do anything wrong here." Refunds began rolling out globally on June 29.
A Lesson dbrand Has Learned Before
The interesting part of this whole saga is that dbrand has walked directly into this exact wall once already. Back at the PlayStation 5's launch, the company released unlicensed faceplates called "Darkplates" that replicated Sony's protected console design, and Sony promptly fired off a cease-and-desist that shut them down. dbrand eventually relaunched a revised "Darkplates 2.0" with enough changes to sidestep the legal issue, and those remain on sale today. The Companion Cube fiasco rhymes with that episode almost perfectly, a high-profile product built on someone else's IP in the hope that a beloved homage would slide past the rights holder. It didn't, and dbrand admitted as much, saying it would "regret that decision for a very long time." There's a fair argument that Valve had every reason to say no beyond simple IP protection, since the company has no way to verify the thermal performance or engineering quality of a third-party enclosure wrapping its console, and attaching the Portal brand to a product it can't vouch for carries real risk. For dbrand, the whole thing amounts to an expensive, very public reminder of a rule it already knew: when you're building on a publisher's most cherished IP, you ask first. The company poured a year and a small fortune into a product fans genuinely wanted, then had to incinerate it, all for want of a phone call it never made.
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