Rumours have been flying around the internet about Cooking Mama: Cookstar, reporting that the game is not only overheating Switch consoles but that it's also secretly a cryptocurrency mining tool.
Over the weekend, Cooking Mama: Cookstar was pulled from the Nintendo eShop with early reports suggesting it was because the game mines cryptocurrency using the processing power of the Switch when downloaded to their console.
When the game was first revealed the developers made open references to blockchain technology, which is what would make such mining possible — this helped fuel recent rumours and accusations.
Developers 1st Playable responded to the claims and denied using blockchain mining functionality in a statement.
"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".
"This is a release from Feb 2019, and we presume hypothetical like most releases about blockchain are. Blockchain was never brought up to us developers, and we were entertained to hear about in late 2019. Not happening anytime soon."
Users on Twitter have undertaken their own independent research and based off what they discovered by data-mining the game, Cookstar has no blockchain functionality anywhere within the game. There's also no trace of cryptocurrency miners in the game itself.
It turns out, however, that Cookstar might have actually been pulled from the eShop because it contains copyrighted material from ripped straight from YouTube and present in the game files.
The overheating rumour, however, has also been thoroughly debunked at this point, which is all perfectly explained here in a handy Twitter thread by Evit_cani
He explains that, among other things, the overheating Switch consoles is simply due to a bad job of removing DRM from the game.
Overall, it seems highly unlikely that Cooking Mama: Cookstar is trying to steal your information and this is a case of a perfectly normal, positive game being the target of misinformation.
