Valve has killed dbrand's excellent Steam Machine case

Last week, Valve opened reservations for its compact prebuilt gaming PC, the Steam Machine. The very same day, dbrand started taking reservations for an elaborate Steam Machine case based on the Portal series’s Companion Cube. In what seems like a very on-brand move for dbrand, the accessory maker apparently didn’t get Valve’s approval beforehand. Now, the project’s been canceled, and anyone who pre-ordered is getting a refund.

Dbrand shared the whole story on its subreddit today. After a concept video of the Companion Cube case gained traction in the weeks following the Steam Machine’s announcement last year, dbrand set about making the case a reality, never seeking any kind of licensing arrangement with Valve.

Valve owns the rights to the Portal franchise and its characters, a fact dbrand doesn’t contest. As the company said in its unusually earnest post about the Companion Cube project’s cancellation, “This was entirely within their rights, and they were direct, fair, and respectful throughout.”

The post says that dbrand complied with Valve’s request to remove the Companion Cube from its storefront immediately. As dbrand tells it, making the accessory was a considerable project that the company has sunk a lot of time and resources into. Valve refused dbrand’s offer to sell the $99 Companion Cube “properly licensed, with their blessing, on their terms,” so it seems like the project is well and truly dead.

The Steam Machine starts at a cool $1,049 for a model that comes with half a terabyte of storage and no bundled controller. Valve took reservations for the prebuilt PC for just a few days last week; anyone interested in picking one up now can sign up for a waitlist at Valve’s website.