Submitted 3 weeks ago by als@lemmy.blahaj.zone to steamdeck@sopuli.xyz
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?
Considering almost the exact same thing happened with Sony before, one can only assume it was on purpose.
LOL I thought I was the only one that remembered the dark plates debacle
As someone with ADHD this triggers me. They are just dishonest, it doesn’t have anything yo do with ADHD. They have a record.
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?
What else do they have that is licensed?
Just recreate the skin with AI and now it's Anthropic's problem.
*taps head
The companion cube gets made and valve sues anthropic into oblivion. That’s a win-win in my book.
Only if Valve invests the winnings into Linux, which tbf they probably would
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 feel like the thing with the PS5 faceplates was bs. They’re just solid colour plastic. But the companion cube one I can understand, as that it was using the design of a “character”(?) that Valve owns without permission
I don’t know a thing about IP laws, so I can’t judge what shape of plastic is required to provide a basis for an IP rights violation. The reason I linked this was that I would take this entire story with a huge grain of salt, considering this company did this before and has apparently not learned all that much from that experience.
IIRC the original plates included trademarked logos belonging to Sony, and dbrand literally invited Sony to sue them in their marketing.
In April 2024, an Indian-origin customer named Bhuwan Chitransh complained about a defective MacBook skin on Twitter. Dbrand responded by mocking his surname with the tweet: “Your last name is basically shit rash, be serious.” […] CEO Adam Ijaz acknowledged the remark as a “severe lapse in judgment”
Holy shit that’s an understatement!
I hope they really gave that guy $10,000
My guess would be that it also involved more than a little bit of alcohol.
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.
You absolutely have the right to make it. Selling it for a profit however…
You don’t actually have to make a profit for it to be a trademark violation
Sure fine cool… but you feel me?
On brand, honestly. The cake is a lie. Companion cube incinerated. Waiting for Valve to put out a GLaDOS front plate now.
Those rights are yours. They’re only denied to you because of copyright and capitalism.
You have a great idea, you put 5 years into perfecting it and making it the best possible Thing™. You use all the money you have, sell everything you can to get enough funding to start production of your great Thing™.
After 2 month of you selling your Thing™ I see that it is a great product and using my vast fortune I immediately start mass producing it and promote My Thing® to everyone. Due to economy of scale I can produce My Thing© for a quarter of your cost and sell it for half of your price. Everybody buys my cheaper copy and you go bankrupt without having anything to your name, because you invested it all and didn’t pay back your loans yet.
Does that sound fair to you? No? Then you better believe copyright is a boon ( if its not corrupted to hell and back).
if its not corrupted to hell and back)
That’s the key. It’s the whole current state of “mine for my entire lifespan, plus decades after to make sure my descendents reap the rewards of my work for generations to come” that is so wrong with copyright.
Original copyright law in the US was 14 years, with an option to renew it up to 28. That at least makes sense to me.
So, Valve releases Portal in 2007, great. They release Portal 2 in 2011, also great. And then they do almost nothing with it. It’s been 15 years since Portal 2.
If they were making a Portal 3? Fine, just say so. Renew it and the IP for Portal 1 remains yours until 2038. Don’t want to do Portal anymore? Well, Portal 1 and its characters should have gone public domain in 2021, then.
This is the typical defence for copyright. It’s also innacurate to the point of being intellectually dishonest. It ignores the reality of capitalism where legal protections only exist for people and corporations that have the money/power to get what they want.
Your Thing™ example would be cloned and sold on Amazon by a broad range of fly-by-night companies, and that’s if you’re lucky. If you’re unlucky, Amazon will clone it themselves, obfuscate your product in its search results, and sell your product under their brand, sometimes even for more than you’re selling it.
If your Thing™ isnt a physical product but rather something creative, then 99 times out of 100, there are only really two paths available to you:
In the lucky case you sell your copyright to a third party that exploits it (and you), offering you a pittance while simultaneously tying your hands, preventing you from creating derivative works or even just giving it away… for the res t of your life, and that of your kids’. In the unlucky case, you can’t afford to promote your product, so you toil for years with little to no reward for your work. Then AI techbros scrape your art and sell it back to you exclusively for their profit.
Copyright has some great marketing, but it offers you little while the rich claim ownership over your art, and our society.
You are not wrong but as a business forced to operate in the shitty boundaries of copyright and capitalism, this was a fairly silly move
Billionaires are a threat to all of us.
These rights are yours. They’re only denied to you because of the laws that specifically say these rights aren’t yours.
Unnatural, illogical laws of man.
Its only this way because we humans say so. We can decide otherwise.
Absolutely copyright is a flawed artificial construct.
But as it is the rights are NOT theirs from a legal perspective.
You can make your own and use yourself. But you are not allowed to either give it away or sell it.
You can just make stickers and put them on your steam machine. Just give the designs for free. The final product looks like a case for the machine, maybe create 3D designs for people to 3D print them?
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
If I had a steam machine I’d want one of these
I’m not gonna lie, not being able to buy it makes me want the steam machine less. Sadly I don’t even need one to begin with.
I doubt it, they seemed pretty pissed at how dbrand works.
99% certain this is what will end up happening.
Its not even a 180.
Its… you used our IP without asking, please go to the back of the line, fill out the form where you properly ask to use, and wait in the queue again.
All they had to do was ask permission first.
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.
The Enrichment Center reminds you that the Weighted Companion Cube will never threaten to stab you and, in fact, cannot speak.
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.
I’m not familiar with steam products, Valve can’t make it either, right?
Valve made the portal games. So they own the rights to the companion cube and can absolutely make this. That is why they sent the cease and desist order to dbrand.
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.
Of course they can, whatever makes you think they can’t???
Are you asking if they do not have the rights or the means?
Ok so leak the STLs from your R&D dept.
Whitebrow@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
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Fedizen@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I mean this kind of honesty is pretty rare these days
Murse@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Not that rare, considering they did the exact same thing already.
Kinda looks like they’re doing it on purpose so that the following apology gets them some free publicity and reputation for being honest… which is manipulative and shady.
osaerisxero@kbin.melroy.org 3 weeks ago
That PR person is over this shit lmao
0ops@piefed.zip 3 weeks ago
Well there ya go