Around an hour ago, SwitchWatch was alerted to the unfolding drama surrounding the recent launch of Cooking Mama: Cookstar on Switch after seeing a post by twitter user @Nibellion. Jordan from SwitchWatchTV picked up a copy as he mentioned in his April 13th Bargains video. The collector in him couldn’t bare not being able to get his hands on a copy while these disputes played out.
Update: It would seem that Planet Entertainment has now ceased selling the game from their site. However has tweeted promotionally recently.
Update 2: Nintendo Commentator Seth Cano messaged me on Twitter, pointing out that this Amazon listing here claims that 2K Games is the publisher of the game. We have reached out to 2K for a comment as well as to Planet Entertainment and its European distributor.
The 6th mainline game in the series has faced much turbulence since its release on March 31st. It was pulled from the Switch eShop almost as soon as it launched, and speculation began that this was because the developer had been using the Switch’s processing power to mine cryptocurrency. This turned out to be false, and as we can see is much more likely due to the aforementioned tussle between Office Create and Planet Entertainment. You can read the full statement here.
We would like to thank our fans and customers for their support over the years for the Cooking Mama franchise. As many of you know, Planet Entertainment LLC (Headquarters: Connecticut, USA; “Planet”) recently released “Cooking Mama: Cookstar” for sale in the U.S., Europe and Australia. This was an unauthorized release in breach of Planet’s contract with Office Create.
…
Office Create’s Official Statement
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.
As of right now, Cooking Mama: Cookstar is still not available on the eShop, and Planet’s first party site now says “sold out”.
However, players can still pre-order both the PS4 and Switch versions on Amazon. There are also users selling overpriced second hand copies for over $100 dollars. Their is a very high chance that these games are a scam. Read more about this in this IGN article.
Despite this, the official Cooking Mama: Cookstar Twitter account tweeted this earlier. The attached video clearly references Cookstar, but the tweet does not directly reference the new game.
Only time will tell whether the game will ever be released and by whom, but one thing’s for sure: Planet Entertainment probably won’t be getting Cooking Mama back.
