Even better than mama!
Those of you who read MMO Fallout might know that I am like a truffle pig except instead of sniffing out delicious and expensive truffles my nose is more attuned to controversies in the gaming sphere.
So my schnoz for the last few months has been pulling me toward Cooking Mama, a game that you would never expect to generate such controversy and mystery surrounding its release. Cooking Mama is one of those games that just comes out. I personally love the series; it’s a simple game about cooking with Mama. What is to hate?
But Cooking Mama was the big mystery of 2020. It showed up on the eShop only to suddenly disappear just a few hours later. Press releases talking about blockchain technology and rumors of bitcoin mining started floating around the internet. A Playstation 4 version was advertised and ultimately never surfaced. And everything around the game just seemed weird.
Why was the trailer unlisted on Youtube? Why are we not getting direct answers on who exactly developed this game? Why is the game not acknowledged at all by Cooking Mama’s official social media? Why did both the alleged developer and publisher scrub any mention of Cooking Mama from their websites? Why were the press releases deleted? What is the deal with airline food?
Some of you may have seen my tweets vicariously pop up on websites covering this, because I got my hands on a physical copy and assisted DoesItPlay with bursting some rumors; specifically that the Switch version requires an internet connection (it doesn’t), that it mines bitcoin (it doesn’t), and that said bitcoin mining or the hasty removal of it causes the battery to drain very fast (it doesn’t). This still didn’t answer the glaring question; why was Cooking Mama pulled from the eShop and why did it suddenly disappear from physical retailers?
Turns out my copy of Cooking Mama is a freaking bootleg.
Office Create is the company that owns Cooking Mama. Yesterday they put out a press release stating that the Cooking Mama license was terminated on March 30 and Planet Entertainment just went ahead and released a now-unlicensed Cooking Mama game anyway. The termination was a result of PE’s refusal to correct deficiencies in the game as it was contractually obligated to do. As a result Office Create is seeking legal remedy. Oh and the PS4 version that vanished? That was never licensed to begin with.
If Cooking Mama is causing battery drain on people’s Switches, it’s because the game was shoddily programmed and never fixed.
On March 30, 2020 Office Create notified Planet of its immediate termination of the license due to Planet’s intentional material breach of the license contract. Despite such notice, Planet continues to advertise and sell the unauthorized version of Cooking Mama: Cookstar on its website in willful violation of Office Create’s rights. To date, Planet has not confirmed the status of the unauthorized PS4™ version.
Office Create is evaluating all legal action against Planet to protect our customers, intellectual property rights and the Cooking Mama series. In the meantime, we thank our customers and loyal Cooking Mama fans for their continued support and sincerely regret any confusion and disappointment that has been caused by Planet’s conduct.
Planet Entertainment, being folks who evidently look at licensing rights the same way a vegan might see a plate of crispy bacon, have resorted to just selling the game through a Shopify account set up on their website. Evidently Planet Entertainment is as good at reading the room as they are competently programming a Cooking Mama game and I am sure this won’t come back to bite them in court if this dispute ends up in front of a judge.
The game itself is fine. It has some technical issues but I wouldn’t exactly call it a disaster. I recommend against buying this game from PE in the hopes that it becomes a collectors item because a lot of people are already doing that and generally that leads to a flood of stock and the value cratering.
So I own a bootleg Cooking Mama game. Not the weirdest thing to happen during the quarantine, but pretty close.
MMO Fallout 