How Cooking Mama Created a Flash in the Pan For Resellers

News

By RC Staff

02 March 2023

Cooking Mama: Cookstar was the sixth entry in the long-running Cooking Mama series of video games. Released in March of 2020, the game was quickly pulled from both online and physical stores. Rumors swirled in the weeks after its launch, with many accusing the game of mining cryptocurrency. In the end, it was revealed that the game’s developer had gone rogue, and released it without approval of the Cooking Mama IP holder, Office Create. During this period of confusion, aftermarket prices for copies of Cookstar rose sharply, and owners could resell games for more than they paid.

What happened with Cooking Mama: Cookstar?

As the first entry in the Cooking Mama series to release on the Nintendo Switch, Cookstar was eagerly anticipated by fans. Initially revealed in 2019, the game gained significant press about its claim to be the first game to implement blockchain technology in its design. While the company claimed this was used for digital rights management only, it added fuel to the later rumors of crypto mining.

Cookstar missed its 2019 release target, but would go on to release on March 31st, 2020. Within a few days, the online listing for it would be pulled from the Nintendo eShop. The game was also slated to launch on the Playstation 4, however no copies were ever sent to retailers, nor was it ever made available digitally.

Physical copies for the Switch were made available for a brief time. These sold for $40, and could be found somewhat unpredictably after the game was pulled. During this time, it was reported that stores would sell their stock to customers with connections to the owners, but not stock them on shelves.

Why was Cooking Mama: Cookstar pulled from shelves?

At first, it was believed Cookstar contained a Bitcoin miner. Speculators pointed to a sudden dip in battery life for the Switch while Cookstar was active, as well as strange network traffic when played online. The game ran poorly, and the opaque declaration that it would feature blockchain technology fed into these rumors.

After a deep dive into the code by hackers, it was discovered that there was no cryptocurrency miner of any kind in the game, and the developers confirmed that their reference to blockchain tech was hypothetical. The game’s poor performance was attributed to rushed and incompetent development, not malice.

Claims that music from the game had been ripped from YouTube surfaced shortly afterwards. It seemed possible that the developer was afraid of copyright issues, and had pulled the game. This was neither confirmed nor denied by developer, 1st Playable, who released a simple statement on April 5th blaming the Coronavirus pandemic for issues with development.

Answers would come on the 15th of April, when Cooking Mama IP holder Office Create issued a statement of their own. They claimed that 1st Playable had failed to meet Office Create’s quality standards, and terminated their license to use the Cooking Mama IP on March 30th. However, 1st Playable flew in the face of this decision by releasing the game anyways.

Why did Cooking Mama: Cookstar resell?

Even before the official statement from Office Create, Cookstar was already reselling. This was mainly because the game was so hard to find. After being pulled from the eShop, it quickly disappeared from retailers’ shelves as well.

Fans eager to try the game were willing to pay a higher price to reseller for their own copy. Even before the crypto mining rumors were debunked, people were curious about the game, and bought it secondhand to try.

With the announcement from Office Create, the true reasons behind the game’s awkward release were revealed. It was found that 1st Playable’s actions were shockingly unprofessional, and it became clear that a legal battle was about to unfold over the game.

Now the discussion around the game entered a new stage. The notion of the game never being fully released, and stuck in limbo or years began to circulate. This new possibility added a new angle to people considering buying the game: collectability.

Not only was the game hard to find, but there was a real chance that it would be impossible to find in the future. If 1st Playable and Office Create failed to reach a mutual agreement, Cooking Mama: Cookstar would never see a proper release. It was possible that the unknown number of copies in circulation would be the last ever made.

Understandably, this triggered a new inflation in prices for resellers. Copies were going for around $120 sealed and $100 used. These prices would last all through April, as the prevailing sentiment shifted towards Cookstar’s chances at a full release being slim.

How did resellers buy copies of Cooking Mama: Cookstar?

With the demand around Cookstar, resellers had to get creative on how they purchased new copies. While the initial batches of physical copies sold were already in circulation, retailers pulled remaining stock from shelves. Large retailers like Walmart and Target tended to respect the pull notice, however small shops were a bit more lenient.

Resellers reported success by calling local game shops directly, and asking to purchase copies for retail directly. This occasionally worked at big box stores as well, but they were far more likely to refuse.

In addition, bundles of the game went up for sale in April, and these were apparently not subject to the same pull notice as regular copies. Kohl’s would list copies of the game with deluxe travel case for the Switch for $60. While slightly more expensive than the base game, it was still an opportunity to profit.

While the game would resell through April and May, copies eventually dried up entirely through May. Some resellers chose to hold their copies, predicting that Cookstar would never release again, and thus make their copies extremely valuable in the future.

By March of 2021, 1st Playable had successfully released the game a second time, this time on PS4 as well. Despite this bravado, the dispute between Office Create and publisher Planet Entertainment had not been resolved, and these sales were essentially illegal.

Yum Yum Cookstar

In late 2022, it was announced that Office Create had successfully argued its case against Planet Entertainment, halting all further production of the game. Evidently developer 1st Playable was prepared for this outcome though, as they released “Yum Yum Cookstar” on October 4, 2022.

Essentially a reskinned version of Cooking Mama: Cookstar, Yum Yum Cookstar features the same minigames and design from the Cooking Mama game. The packaging also proudly announces that it is “from the creators of Cooking Mama: Cookstar”.

Despite Cooking Mama: Cookstar effectively being removed from sale, aftermarket sales are not speeding up. Resell prices remain firmly below retail. This would suggest that the brief spike in prices was primarily driven by emotion and social media frenzy, and after the game fell out of public consciousness, so did the aftermarket.

A fairly significant number of copies of the game were produced as well. Planet Entertainment’s decision to push the game out the door without proper permissions led to plenty of copies in circulation, so scarcity wasn’t really a factor.

In the end, the bizarre saga of Cooking Mama: Cookstar will likely be forgotten, especially considering the mediocre reviews of the game. Most people will consider it an amusing anecdote about corporate immaturity, and a few collectors will keep copies of the game for the remarkable story behind its release.