DOOM Meme Makes Epson Cube Printer Go Viral and Sparks Debate

According to a post on Reddit's r/steammachine, a shopper spotted a boxy Epson device in a store that looks strikingly similar to Valve's unreleased SteamMachine hardware, turning a simple photo into a meme-filled comment thread. The post picked up more than 100 upvotes within a little over 10 hours, and the discussion quickly moved from the visual resemblance to hardware jokes, DOOM memes, and nostalgia for Valve's shelved living-room PC push.

The device itself is almost beside the point. What stands out is how instantly recognizable the SteamMachine shape still is. One squared-off cube was enough to send commenters back to the period when Valve was trying to bring the PC into the living room. In the comments, some users joked that maybe the SteamMachine project was delayed because Epson started a trademark dispute over the same cube-like design. Others ran with it and debated whether a basic cube-shaped design could even be protected as a trademark.

For hardware hobbyists, this kind of thread follows a familiar pattern: the shape triggers nostalgia, and the community keeps it alive with memes. DOOM was inevitable. Commenters quickly moved to the classic test: can it run DOOM? The punchline that seemed to land best was the obvious one: it cannot run games, but it can print the game onto paper. It works because it combines two of the PC crowd's oldest habits: porting everything and modding anything.

That wasn't the end of it, either. Half-Life 3 came up next, with users riffing on Valve's most famous running joke. One commenter even imagined buying the console when a new game finally ships, then using this printer as the screen. It also says a lot about SteamMachine's afterlife: as a product, it is long dormant, but as a piece of community culture, it still carries enough weight to tie together Valve nostalgia, console-style form factor talk, living-room PC history, and the eternal Half-Life 3 gag.

The thread also had a more practical side, with collectors asking for the exact model. Community users identified the device as the Epson TM-M30III, and some said they planned to buy used units on eBay and modify them, then display them alongside the original cube-style SteamMachine. For collectors, the appeal is straightforward: the shape is close enough, and it would pair neatly with an original cube-style SteamMachine as a display piece. Still, the conversation was less about practicality than about how closely the machine resembles Valve's old design.

There is no hardware announcement here, and nothing official from Valve, but it is a good example of how game communities keep old ideas in circulation. A device that looks close enough, plus durable jokes like DOOM and Half-Life 3, is enough to bring an old project back into the conversation. For people interested in niche hardware and mod culture, the Epson TM-M30III has effectively become fresh material. For everyone else, it is a reminder that some failed or shelved projects stick around less because of what they shipped than because the community kept the memory alive.

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