The cube was a lie: up close with our Dbrand Companion Cube before it gets destroyed

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Dbrand will destroy them all, but we took some photos first.

Dbrand will destroy them all, but we took some photos first.

by Sean Hollister

Jul 1, 2026, 11:00 AM UTC

Photo by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Sean Hollister

is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.

Dbrand is the company that shipped a product that told Nintendo’s legal team to “go fuck yourself,” and the company that had a second set of lawyer-dodging PS5 plates ready when Sony threatened to sue over the originals. But on June 29th, the company finally ate some serious humble pie, canceling its Portal-themed Companion Cube external shell for the Steam Machine after Valve lawyered up.

I couldn’t believe it. Surely Dbrand had to have seen this coming. There must be a plan B, right?

“There is no further plan. We fucked this one up,” Dbrand CEO Adam Ijaz now tells me.

He says Dbrand will now have to destroy every single cube it manufactured, and it won’t even get to throw them in an incinerator for thematically appropriate fun.

Here’s the good news: I took up-close-and-personal photos of the (likely) copyright-infringing gadget for posterity on June 19th, before the lawyers struck. You can wistfully imagine what could have been, or use them as an outlet for your schadenfreude at Dbrand’s incredibly embarrassing mistake... or both! I won’t judge.

Here are all my photos in roughly chronological order:

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Sean Hollister

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