Home Gaming The Cooking Mama Cookstar saga just took a wild new legal turn

The Cooking Mama Cookstar saga just took a wild new legal turn

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What an unexpected turn of events that I doubt anyone saw coming, right? Last week we wrote up an article explaining the whole controversy around Cooking Mama: Cookstar, the latest entry into the beloved cooking simulator that was just…well, a Gordon Ramsay Kitchen Nightmare to say the least. The game vanished off the Nintendo eShop while physical copies wafted around in some brick-and-mortar stores, while allegations started to spread that the game’s disappearance was due to it illicitly mining cryptocurrencies through blockchain technology which was causing player’s Switches to overheat. While it was confirmed that this was not the case and the more likely reason for the eShop disappearance was due to the game containing music files ripped straight off YouTube, it was an absolute PR disaster and the owners of the Cooking Mama IP are not pleased.

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Reported by Gamespot, Office Create, owners of the IP, are taking legal action against the publisher of Cooking Mama: Cookstar, Planet Entertainment. Confirmed in a statement, Office Create alleges that Planet Entertainment breached their licencing contract by launching the game when it did:

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.

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That’s not all though. The statement also alleges that Planet Entertainment was promoting the release of a PS4 version of the game which apparently doesn’t exist. Despite the official termination of the licencing deal between Office Create and Planet Entertainment, the game is still being sold on the publisher’s website which is “in willful violation of Office Create’s rights.” So the whole thing is just a real big mess and while Planet Entertainment has yet to respond to these claims, these are the sorts of allegations that sink a reputation; I doubt many people will think twice before publishing their games with them in the future.

Last Updated: April 15, 2020

One Comment

  1. konfab

    April 15, 2020 at 10:56

    I love the way that it instantly assumed that the Switch overheating was caused by it mining crypto.
    Way more likely that there was a thread in the application that wasn’t being put to sleep.

    Never attribute to malice that which you can attribute to stupidity.

    Probably goes for the copyrighted content as well. They probably did it during the design phase to get the feel of the game right. But inevitably forgot to get proper licences.

    Reply

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