‘Cooking Mama’ saga reaches boiling point as IP holders seek legal action

Cooking Mama: Cookstar developers, Planet Entertainment, are to face legal action from the Office Create, the IP holders, after launching the new game without their consent.

Fans of the series managed to purchase the latest Cooking Mama instalment after it was released on the Nintendo eShop, before being taken down after a request Office Create. Physical copies were also shipped.

In a statement released on Wednesday, Office Create said this was an “unauthorised release in breach of Planet’s contract with Office Create”.

Since the Cooking Mama: Cookstar release, Office Create have terminated their licensing agreement with Planet Entertainment and are “evaluating all legal action against Planet to protect our customers, intellectual property rights and the Cooking Mama series”.

The company was unhappy with the quality of Cooking Mama: Cookstar, citing a “wide range of deficiencies affecting the overall feel, quality, and content of the game” as their reasoning behind rejecting plans to release the game in April.

Office Create is evaluating all legal action against Planet to protect our customers, intellectual property rights and the Cooking Mama series

Planet Entertainment continued to move towards an April release, ignoring demands from Office Create to give the developers at 1st Playable more time to tweak the game.

It is also believed that Office Create did not authorise the PS4 version of Cooking Mama: Cookstar advertised in the games’ marketing.

In response to Office Create, Planet Entertainment released a statement in which they maintained “Planet is fully within its rights to publish Cooking Mama: Cookstar” and that the problems raised by Office Create were “outside the scope of our agreement and game design approved by Office Create”.

The statement from Office Create comes after fans speculated Cookstar’s takedown was because of its use of blockchain technology, commonly used for mining cryptocurrency. Fans who had received the game early complained of their devices overheating, believing this to be a result of blockchain technology.

Planet Entertainment later confirmed in a tweet that this rumour was “absolutely incorrect”, and that the technology was explored, but never implemented. A developer at 1st Playable told ScreenRant that these were simply buzzwords used by executives to garner attention from potential investors.

Planet Entertainment also further complicated the release by claiming the takedown and delay of Cooking Mama: Cookstar was related to the Covid-19 pandemic.