The innocent video game Cooking Mama came into spotlight recently as it was served together with accusations of illegal cryptocurrency mining.
The simple game involves players to follow instructions and “cook” various meals together with its titular cooking star Mama. Created for Nintendo Switch consoles the game was announced to be released on March 26th.
But contrary to official tweets and fan’s expectations, the game has simply disappeared. It wasn’t available on Nintendo eShop in the United States nor in Europe. To be precise, it appeared on the US eShop for a few hours and then went missing again. And this is where rumours and conspiracy theories began to arise.
Cooking Mama accused for mining digital coins
To be consistent, the first reports about the upcoming Cooking Mama game were released back in 2019. A blockchain gaming company Planet Digital Partners advertised then that Cooking Mama would be the first game to integrate blockchain technology on major consoles.
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The fact was enough to ignite suspicions that the mysterious disappearance of a newly released video game was related to the illegal use of blockchain. Since the same blockchain technology is used to mine digital currencies, the accusations of secretly mining crypto on Switch consoles started to pop up on Twitter:
Furthermore, the speculations began to spread even more, accusing blockchain not only for illegal mining, but also for potentially accessing players’ personal information and overheating consoles, which significantly reduces their battery life.
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The game’s developer 1st Playable quickly came up with an answer dispelling the myth about the illegal use of blockchain. According to company’s tweet, blockchain was not even involved:
The truth is out where?
At the time of writing, there is still no official explanation from Nintendo about the sudden disappearance of its newly released Cooking Mama game. While even it’s developers wonder what’s going on with the game’s distribution, there answer might be much simpler.
Since the coronavirus pandemic locked down the countries around the world in quarantine to limit the virus spread, the transportation industry was one of the first to face the severe restrictions. As countries shut their borders and give priority for food, basic goods and medical supply transportations, other industries currently deal with severe delays.
