While not a massive success on the scale of similar cutesy, simple games of its ilk, the Cooking Mama series has had a small but devoted fanbase since its inception. So it was with delight that players received leaks of a new Cooking Mama game coming to the Switch earlier this year, which was eventually revealed to be Cooking Mama: Cookstar, and was released not long after, on March 26th.
At first glance, nothing seemed strange about the new Cooking Mama game except that the filling of its sandwiches seemed to be a strange rainbow color, adding further to the cartoon nature of the game. However, the new game promised to fans of the series vanished from the Nintendo eShop mysteriously, ans well as other retail sources almost immediately after it was released.
Rumors rapidly circulated about the game's disappearance from virtual retail sites, mostly centering around the fact that the game connected to the blockchain, as well as the fact that it seemed to be causing Switch consoles to overheat. From these, a rumor began circulating that Cooking Mama: Cookstar mined cryptocurrency as it was played, and that it was pulled from the Nintendo eShop once this was discovered. However, that rumor has now been publicly denied by the developers of the game, who said the only mention they heard of Bitcoin being associated with Cooking Mama: Cookstar came from the rumors themselves, and found the idea amusing. There is still no official word as to why the game was pulled from the Nintendo eShop so suddenly after its release.
The developers' claim that there is no association with cryptocurrency in Cooking Mama: Cookstar has been backed up by dataminers, who thoroughly examined copies of the game where available to try and crack the mysteries surrounding it. What was discovered was not only a complete lack of Bitcoin mining software, but also the possible reason the game was overheating Switch consoles that attempted to play it. It seems that several redundant DRM functions in the game used up a lot of processing power while the game was online to try and stop piracy, and this was the source behind the overheat problems. It seems that this problem, at least, can be solved by playing offline, as players using airplane mode did not experience it.
So what is the actual reason behind the release and sudden disappearance of Cooking Mama: Cookstar from the Nintendo eShop? Again, there has been no official reason given, but further datamining discovered that some of the game's tracks were pulled directly from YouTube, so it is possible, that copyright infringement or some other similar disagreement arose from this.
With the possibility of music and DRM having to be reworked, as well as the conspiracy theories surrounding it, there's a good chance that Cooking Mama: Cookstar will not be making its way back to the Nintendo eShop anytime soon. For those in the mood for a cute, fun, relatively low-stress game, Animal Crossing: New Horizons is probably the best bet for now.
Cooking Mama: Cookstar was available for the Nintendo Switch.
Source: Nintendo Life