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this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2026
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Steam Hardware
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I guess what I'm asking is, I'm assuming dbrand made it look a certain way that is popular with the fans, can Valve make it look like that? Sorry that my question wasn't probably clear.
I'm not sure I understand. Dbrand made a steam machine skin that looks like a companion cube from portal. Valve made the portal games, and thus owns the rights to the companion cube. So valve can make a companion cube skin because they already own the rights to it. Dbrand cannot because they didn't license it with valve.
The cube thing is from portal, a game made by valve. Valve owns the rights to portal and can therefore use the ip however they please.
Dbrand made a Companion Cube enclosure for Valve’s new console. Valve owns the copyright for the Companion Cube, since it is from one of the games they made. Valve sent a cease & desist to dbrand, for infringing on their copyright. Valve could absolutely make a Companion Cube enclosure of their own, if they wanted to. Hell, they could even make a Companion Cube edition of their console, so the enclosure is redundant.
Dbrand wasn’t doing anything notable with their enclosure, except that they were the first ones to announce it. But it is a clear violation of Valve’s copyright, and Dbrand didn’t even bother checking with Valve ahead of time to form a partnership contract. If Dbrand wanted to do things properly, that would have been step 0. But they just skipped it entirely, and started selling directly to customers. So naturally, Valve slapped them.
Wow, that does seem really stupid them. I thought maybe they came up with a great new look or something, but no, lol.