UPDATE: Planet Entertainment have released a statement, claiming to be well within their legal rights to have published Cooking Mama CookStar. You can read more about it here.
Office Create, the owners of the Cooking Mama franchise, have stated Planet Entertainment released Cooking Mama CookStar without their permission.
In case you missed our prior report, there had been many nasty rumors surrounding Cooking Mama CookStar, initially with claims that the game utilized the Nintendo Switch as a crypto-currency miner without the player’s consent.
This turned out to be false. It was either hastily removed before release, or never intended to be part of the game (with the promise used to lure in investors).
What we did find was the game not appearing on official social media channels for the IP holders of Cooking Mama, Office Create. It should be noted Office Create are also known as Cooking Mama Limited, changing their name in May 2009.
The game also received little to no advertising or promotion, and was pulled from the Nintendo eShop practically the second it went on sale. Physical versions of the game do exist, but seemingly not through first party Nintendo distributors.
The game even seemingly had a PlayStation 4 version planned, despite the franchise being primarily a Nintendo title.
Now, Office Create have issued a statement. They have drawn attention to this statement with a tweet, and even a warning label on their website [1, 2].
Office Create issued the following statement in English:
“We would like to thank our fans and customers for their support over the years for the Cooking Mama franchise. As many of you know, Planet Entertainment LLC (Headquarters: Connecticut, USA; “Planet”) recently released “Cooking Mama: Cookstar” for sale in the U.S., Europe and Australia. This was an unauthorized release in breach of Planet’s contract with Office Create.
In August 2018, Office Create licensed Planet to develop the Cooking Mama: Cookstar game for Nintendo Switch™. Unfortunately, the quality of the game builds failed to meet the standards that our customers expect and deserve. Office Create rejected a wide range of deficiencies affecting the overall feel, quality and content of the game. Yet, despite being contractually obligated to correct the identified deficiencies and resubmit the corrected game for Office Create’s approval, Planet proceeded to release Cooking Mama: Cookstar without addressing all of the rejections and without Office Create’s approval.
We have also learned that Planet and/or its European distributor has been promoting an upcoming European release of a PS4™ version of Cooking Mama: Cookstar. Office Create has not licensed Planet (or any other entity) to create any Cooking Mama games for PS4™. Office Create itself has not been involved in the development of any PS4™ Cooking Mama game.
On March 30, 2020 Office Create notified Planet of its immediate termination of the license due to Planet’s intentional material breach of the license contract. Despite such notice, Planet continues to advertise and sell the unauthorized version of Cooking Mama: Cookstar on its website in willful violation of Office Create’s rights. To date, Planet has not confirmed the status of the unauthorized PS4™ version.
Office Create is evaluating all legal action against Planet to protect our customers, intellectual property rights and the Cooking Mama series. In the meantime, we thank our customers and loyal Cooking Mama fans for their continued support and sincerely regret any confusion and disappointment that has been caused by Planet’s conduct.”
An anonymous source from our prior report (via ScreenRant) claiming to be a developer on the game, 1st Playable, is now seemingly vindicated. You can find their comments below.
“There is a legal battle between the publisher, planet entertainment and the ip holder, office create. […] Planet entertainment released the game against a request by office create to keep polishing the game, or perhaps even canceling it. […] “At one point the japanese official create clients came to oversee development. An argument started and the clients were told to go home if they weren’t being ‘constuctive’. Once they found out that planet entertainment released the game, they used their nintendo contacts to pull it from the e-shop and stop production of cartridges.”
The lack of communication between the publisher and developer was said to be “pretty standard.” However, 1st Playable would deny these claims on Twitter.
“The screenrant ‘article’ is a dev spoof and has no accurate dev information,” the tweet states. “To point out an obvious one, everyone on the team knew the release date, like any professional developer would. We can’t speak to who this person is or where they got their information. Not anyone here.”
Nonetheless, the Cooking Mama CookStar Twitter account has sprung to life after weeks of little to no activity. No doubt fueled by the accusations made against the game.
We will keep you informed as we learn more about the situation.
Image: Cooking Mama Fandom Wiki, Office Create official English website, Pxhere
