Planet Entertainment have released a statement, claiming to be well within their legal rights to have published Cooking Mama CookStar, despite claims from IP holders Office Creates.

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.

Office Create then issued a statement. They state the licence to Planet Entertainment was terminated on March 30th, and that the game was released without their permission in breach of contract. They also state they never approved of a PlayStation 4 version of the game be developed.

Now, Planet Entertainment have issued their own statement, claiming to be within their rights to do so.

The statement comes via the Cooking Mama: CookStar Twitter account. As we mentioned when we first investigated Planet Entertainment, the news section on their website is blank as of this time of writing. The tweet reads as follows.

“Planet Entertainment wants to explain the mystery surrounding the Nintendo Switch game to all Cooking Mama Cookstar fans.

Office Create, the rights holder to Cooking Mama, approved a detailed game design in 2019. 1st Playable the game developer and Planet followed the exact approved design. That design is the exact game on Nintendo Switch which also includes many additional Office Create suggestions which add gameplay value.

Unfortunately, creative differences arose as Cooking Mama Cookstar was near completion that were outside the scope of our agreement and the game design approved by Office Create.

By contract, Planet is fully within its rights to publish Cooking Mama Cookstar. There is no active litigation or ruling that prevents Planet from publishing the game.

Cooking Mama fans have been very enthusiastic about Cooking Mama Cookstar, including the many new features including Vegetarian and, Unicorn food, Potluck Party plus more.

We appreciate the overwhelming positive response and support from Cooking Mama Cookstar fans.

Office Create has our total respect. We thank them for their wisdom and wish them well.”

An anonymous source from our prior report (via ScreenRant) claiming to be a developer on the game, 1st Playable, also claimed there were disagreements between Office Create and Planet Entertainment. 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.”

Who will turn out to be right in the end? Who do you think? Sound off in the comments below!

Image: Pixabay, Cooking Mama Fandom Wiki, Planet Entertainment official website