Cooking Mama: Cookstar, a game about fine dining, is reportedly cooking your Switch from the inside

Of all the games that could end up as a case file in some reboot of Sherlock Holmes, one would hardly have suspected Cooking Mama to be the forerunner on that list. Yet here we are, folks. In the year 2020, where the world nearly saw World War 3 and half the planet is under threat by a superflu, we have the case of Cooking Mama: Cookstar – The Game That Disappeared and Stole All Your Bitcoin. At least, that’s what the stories entail. Undoubtedly one of the strangest things to happen in the world of gaming this year, maybe even the last ten years, we’re here to give you the rundown on this whole conspiracy. One that saw the adorable and titular Mama allegedly in cahoots with bitcoin miners and blockchain coders. It’s a wild ride, so buckle up.

So to start us off, let’s check out the game’s official Twitter page. While the pinned tweet mentions that you can only order the game, the actual trailer included in the pinned tweet specifies that the game is “Available Now”. Great! What a nice surprise! When you head to the Switch eshop to look for it, it’s nowhere to be found. No matter what you search for, Cooking Mama: Cookstar is missing. Yet according to IGN, what thinks this particular broth is that game that was available last week. It’s supposedly already out yet searching for it yields no results, meaning the game must have been unceremoniously pulled from the eshop. Redditors have reportedly spotted physical copies of the game on sale at US superstore chain Target, yet not even Amazon has copies as they only list third-party sellers.

Yet to make things even more complicated, several users have been claiming that Cooking Mama: Cookstar has been mining bitcoin, which is just…who could have ever predicted that? According to Dexerto, Publisher Planet Digital Publishers (or is that Planet Entertainment? There’s even confusion about who published this enigma) confirmed that the game does feature blockchain DRM but that it isn’t mining cryptocurrencies. That hasn’t stopped people from claiming that the game is mining bitcoin, sharing personal information with data centres and that it’s even overheating Switch consoles in the process.

Look, all of these claims of bitcoin mining and overheating haven’t been proven, so maybe take that all with a bit of conspiratorial salt. The Cooking Mama: Cookstar Twitter account tweeted out that the game isn’t being used for anything related to bitcoin mining but confirmed that it does feature blockchain coding. So who knows? If you want to read about this whole mess in more detail, IGN did a fantastic deep dive into the situation which I recommend looking into because it’s a real wild ride of ups and downs. Of all things, I did not expect to start my week off writing about cryptocurrency mining in Cooking Mama.

Last Updated: April 6, 2020