Dbrand thought they could get away with this Steam Machine case, Valve disagreed

Dbrand has pulled the plug on its eagerly awaited Companion Cube case for the Valve Steam Machine, a product that had been teased with concept renders and a sign‑up page last November, after discovering it had produced the hardware without first securing Valve’s approval.

The company admits it took a reverse engineering route, building the enclosure before seeking clearance from the rights holder. The effort spanned seven months, consuming more than a thousand engineering hours, and involved creating 44 distinct injection‑mold tooling sets—one for every sub‑component of the crate.

When the Companion Cube finally launched on Monday, it surged to become Dbrand’s second‑fastest‑selling item in fifteen years, with orders swelling into the hundreds of thousands. Shoppers snapped up the $129.95 deluxe version or the budget $99.95 model, dubbed the “Poverty Cube.” It was at this juncture that Valve’s legal team issued a formal cease‑and‑desist, citing the block’s status as protected intellectual property from Portal and demanding that unlicensed sales cease.

Dbrand explained that all attempts to negotiate a licensed release with Valve—including proposals to launch under official terms with Valve’s endorsement—were ignored, forcing the company to comply and purge the product from all online channels. Customers who purchased the enclosure can expect refunds processed by the end of the week; if funds have not yet appeared, the company urges them to reach out to support.

However, the launch has been hampered by a global shortage of memory and storage components, driving the console’s price higher than many anticipated. The base 512 GB model starts at $1,049 without a controller, or $1,128 when paired with the new gamepad. The premium 2 TB edition pushes the price to $1,349 for the console alone, and $1,428 for the bundled package.