There’s a rather curious case brewing around the recently released Cooking Mama: Cookstar, as the series owners are now pursuing legal action against Planet Entertainment, the publishers of the game, citing an “unauthorized release” in breach of their contract.
This follows the already incredibly odd release of Cooking Mama: Cookstar at the end of March, with the game appearing on the Nintendo eShop very briefly before being pulled. Physical copies could still be found, and its removal from sale was down to a simple lack of polish, and not rumoured cryptocurrency mining that developer 1st Playable denied.
That’s given credence by Office Create’s statement, saying that “the quality of the game builds failed to meet the standards that our customers expect and deserve.”
The statement continues, “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.”
Not only that, but Planet Entertainment had been publicising a PlayStation 4 release of the game that was outside the terms of their contract.
“Office Create has not licensed Planet (or any other entity) to create any Cooking Mama games for PS4. Office Create itself has not been involved in the development of any PS4 Cooking Mama game.”
Oof.
So, on 30th March, Office Create terminated the license, and still Planet continued to advertise and sell Cooking Mama: Cookstar. A surefire recipe for being served up a lawsuit, and that seems to be what Office Create are looking at doing next.
So where does this leave Cooking Mama: Cookstar? Well, by all counts, the game won’t really be missed, but there’s clearly an appetite for a Cooking Mama game, whether it’s on Switch, PS4 or something else entirely. Hopefully Office Create can find new partners to work with on a new, more gourmet release sometime soon.
Source: Office Create
