Cooking Mama IP Holder Considering Legal Action After “Unauthorized Release” Of Cookstar

Office Create, the owners of the Cooking Mama IP, have released an important announcement related to Cooking Mama: Cookstar.

According to the company, Cooking Mama: Cookstar was an “unauthorized release” by Planet Entertainment. Apparently, Office Create had a lot of problems with the game that they wanted corrected before launch, but Planet Entertainment chose to release the game anyway without fixing any of the issues.

As a result, Office Create is now “evaluating all legal action against Planet” in order to “protect their customers, intellectual property rights and the Cooking Mama series”. At the time of this writing, it is unknown exactly what kind of repercussions Planet can expect to face as a result of their actions.

You can check out Office Create’s full press release on the matter below:

April 15, 2020
Office Create Corp.

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 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.

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