Gaming

Cooking Mama: Cookstar embroiled in bizarre cryptocurrency conspiracy


Has Mama fallen on hard times? (Pic: 1st Playable)

The developers of Cooking Mama: Cookstar have denied mining cryptocurrency from players’ consoles.

The Cooking Mama series of games have never been spotlight stealers, content with being simple and harmless mini-game compilations. But the latest title, Cooking Mama: Cookstar, has quickly gained a bizarre reputation due to some supposed ties to cryptocurrency.

Originally announced last August, Cookstar drew some attention thanks to its press release advertising it as the ‘first game to integrate blockchain technology on major consoles.’ In case you didn’t know, blockchain technology is responsible for digital currency like bitcoin.

This seems to have led to speculation that the Switch title (which is apparently also slated for a PlayStation 4 release) was secretly mining cryptocurrency (somehow) from players’ consoles, which would result in the consoles overheating and the batteries being drained.

None of which makes the least bit of sense from a technical perspective and is one step above claiming your console is haunted.

What likely helped these rumours, as reported on by IGN, is Cookstar’s highly peculiar launch. Although it apparently launched last week digitally on the Nintendo eShop, it can no longer be found there in either Europe or the US.

Physical copies of the game do exist, with American retailer Target, for example, selling them, but they otherwise seem nearly impossible to find.

For a while, confusion began to spread about who had even made the new Cooking Mama game. The original studio, Office Create (aka Cooking Mama Ltd.), appears to have had no involvement with it and the listed developer, 1st Playable, apparently didn’t acknowledge the game’s existence on its own website.

Circumstances have changed, however, more recently. Not only has the aforementioned website been updated to include Cooking Mama, the studio’s Twitter account has responded to the cryptocurrency accusations.

According to the tweet, not only are the claims unfounded, but the game doesn’t even feature the advertised blockchain technology.

‘As the developers we can say with certainty there is no cryptocurrency or data collection or blockchain or anything else shady in the code. The Nintendo Switch is a very safe platform, with none of the data and privacy issues associated with some mobile and PC games.’

At the time of writing, there is still no explanation for the sudden de-listing or why it’s in such short supply, but 1st Playable added that it was also ‘frustrated as everyone with the distribution situation.’

It’s true that new releases are currently being affected by the coronavirus situation, so it’s possible that that had some involvement but that still leaves a lot of questions unanswered, like why the game was advertised as having blockchain technology in the first place.

Cooking Mama: Cookstar is/will be available on Switch and PlayStation 4.

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