Tell me your company leadership has ADHD without saying it.

Have they actually worked with Valve before? How could they be dumb enough to not reach out first?

Or was this maybe an attempt to strong-arm Valve into granting them a license? Like, did they expect them to go, "well shit, you've got so many preorders now I guess we'll have to sign off on it"?

Or did they simply expect Valve not to care?

Just recreate the skin with AI and now it's Anthropic's problem.

*taps head

Talk about boneheaded. This idea would have been an easy shoe-in for all parties involved. How is a company whose whole business model is to work with licensing designs manage to forget like the first step in licensing?

Someone pointed this out in another thread, and I think it's worth repeating: dbrand has a history of doing this and has had the same thing happen before when they produced unlicensed faceplates for the PS5.

I am not the least bit surprised.

When they first announced it so soon after the Steam Machine was announced, it couldn't have been more obvious that it's unlicensed. There's just no way they could have secured a license from Valve that fast.

After that though, you might think they had plenty of time to reach out and make a deal. And yes, I did half expect them to do this instead of being complete idiots, but judging by the sheer confidence they showed in the original announcement, being complete idiots is also likely.

I am slightly annoyed at Valve for waiting up until the last possible minute to send that C&D, considering they HAD to know about this product right from the start. But I get it. Giving Valve the maximum benefit of the doubt, they could have decided to wait for dbrand to contact them, and they probably already worked up the terms by which they'd license their IP. But as a sort of power play combined with a test of character, they needed dbrand to be the one to make contact first. And they just waited for that to happen, because dbrand HAD to get a license from them, right? Alas, dbrand failed the test of character. Damn.

On brand, honestly. The cake is a lie. Companion cube incinerated. Waiting for Valve to put out a GLaDOS front plate now.

That sucks, but is understandable. I hope Valve can do something positive like buy the design from Dbrand then sell it themselves. Then Dbrand doesn't loose a bunch of money, Valve can protect their IP, and fans can buy the fun thing they want. Seems unlikely, but it would be cool.

Funny thing noone talks about, they had a bunch of existing skins for other devices that use Valve IP, for years. The big thing here is the Steam Machine case cancellation, but they actually also removed lots of other designs they had the entire time.

So not only they flew too close to the Sun on this new product, they ended up losing a bunch of existing products that Valve never called then out on earlier.

I do wonder if Valve will do a 180 and agree to license it. Seems like they could stand to make good money by just charging dbrand a per-unit fee

You absolutely have the right to make it. Selling it for a profit however…

If valve does a real weighted companion cube steam machine I'm in real danger of throwing down a lot of money for something I don't really need.

They might have gotten away with a "future space crate" design, without the hearts. And then throw in a set of "I ❤️ Dbrand" stickers that you can snip the heart out of.

They could still do a generic "shipping crate" case, with handy little front cover removal tool and storage slot (crowbar emoji goes here).

This is a marketing stunt

They should have made it cost 50% more than planned as a tribute.

Ok so leak the STLs from your R&D dept.

How can a large company be run this poorly? I'm just a non-MBA having idiot and even I know you need to get rights and licenses to do this kind of stuff!

They make skins for the steam deck, so it's not like they didn't know how to get permission to do this kind of thing. I sort of feel like this company does stupid shit on purpose to generate media coverage and considers the media coverage a win for brand recognition; financial consequences be damned.

Are they stupid, individual creators can do that for themselves, not to sell for a buisnees, why are so many dumbasses in positions of power and how can we rip them from the controls, like seriously.

They didn't make sure to have the license before developing it. And it was not the first time to not get the license. Don't blame others for your own failure.

That apology stinks of LLM to me.

Or perhaps living in this second-rate Temu timeline is driving me mad.