The dramatic saga around the Cooking Mama: Cookstar just got a little more heated, as publisher Planet Entertainment and rights-holder Office Create both took their grievances public — with the latter threatening legal action.
The situation began when Cooking Mama: Cookstar, which was released in late March for Nintendo Switch, was unexpectedly pulled from Nintendo’s eShop and physical copies disappeared from store shelves. The move immediately sparked rumors, including a theory that the game was secretly mining currency using players’ consoles.
Planet Entertainment quickly shot that rumor down.
But the drama escalated on Wednesday, April 15, when Office Create published a statement saying that the company had rejected Planet Entertainment’s build of the game due to “deficiencies affecting the overall feel, quality and content of the game.”
Office Create slammed the game’s release as “unauthorized.”
“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,” Office Create said in its statement.
The rights-holder disavowed a supposed PS4 version of the game that it claimed was being promoted for launch in Europe.
Office Create added the company is “evaluating all legal action against Planet to protect our customers, intellectual property rights and the Cooking Mama series.”
Planet Entertainment took to Twitter to tell its side of the story, saying that Office Create had approved the game design in 2019, and that the published version “followed the exact approved design.”
“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,” Planet Create said, adding that it is “fully within its rights to publish Cooking Mama Cookstar.”
The game remains unavailable for purchase.
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