Office Create and Planet Entertainment Issue More Statements On Cooking Mama Cookstar

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This article was originally written for TheNintendoVillage.com, a website I founded and ran from 2018 to 2021.

The curious case of Cooking Mama: Cookstar continues to ramble on. After Planet Entertainment - the game’s publisher - opted to sell the game from their website directly, Office Create, the company who owns the rights to the Cooking Mama IP, has issued a statement in which they warn Planet Entertainment that they’re “evaluating all legal action.”

Here’s the statement in full:

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.

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.

We have also learned that Planet and/or its European distributor has been promoting an upcoming European release of a PS4™ version of Cooking Mama: Cookstar. 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.

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 (sic) 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.

In response to this, Planet Entertainment issued a statement on Twitter claiming they’re well within their rights to publish the game, despite Office Create’s reservations over, what they call ‘creative differences’:

Something tells us this saga is far from over and there’s likely to be a lawsuit at some point. In the meantime, the game has now sold out on Planet Entertainment’s website.

Were you one of those who got their hands on the game? Let us know down below.