dbrand's Steam Machine cube companion case is DEAD, Valve shut it down.

The concept dropped in November and got over 15k requests for a launch alert. 7 months of work, 1000+ engineering hours, 40+ component sets. Pre-orders opened June 22, overnight it became dbrand's second best-seller ever, behind only the Switch 2 Killswitch.

Then Valve's lawyers showed up, no license. dbrand's philosophy: "ask forgiveness, not permission." They pulled the product, refunded everyone, and asked Valve for rights, denied. Priced at $99, sold at a loss, but it was a "life's work" project. Now it's a painful lesson, but some buyers already got their cases, and unboxing videos are out.

1 Comments

jeeva@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 63d

I've got to be honest, here, your framing feels weird.

Dbrand's life's work was a companion cube case for a product that didn't exist a year and a half ago?

It's sort of on them if after (or even before) all of the listed things above they never asked Valve if it was okay, presumably to skip any hint of troublesome license fees.

So, yeah. That's kinda on them.