What Is 'Save Scumming'? The Gaming Trick Disparaged As 'Cheating' By Some Explained

Gaming enthusiasts have been debating and joking about a video game practice that is vehemently supported by some gamers and sneered at by others. While the ability to "save" one's process in a video game became commonplace after the introduction of memory cards in the '90s, "grinding" at a video game is still considered to be a badge of honor in some video game circles.

Such video game purists bestowed a befittingly derogatory name to people who don't just use the save feature, but arguably abuse it. Save scumming is the name given to the act of setting a save point right before a difficult patch in a game, and repeatedly reloading the game after failing the stage. Here's what people think about the practice on the internet.

How Old Is The Practice Of 'Save Scumming'?

Video game manuals noting and advising players against abusing the save feature can be traced back as far as the 1990s when a manual for the 1996 role-playing video game The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall included a section advising players against using the "Replay the Save Game" strategy to avoid negative consequences of failed actions and encourages them to play out all experiences, good and bad.

This section in the manual implied that players would lose out on essential aspects of the game by hyper-focusing on attaining a so-called "perfect run."

Where Did The Phrase 'Save Scumming' Originate?

The earliest known use of the specific phrase "save scumming" can be traced to a December 15th, 2003 post on a gaming forum, where someone discussed an open-source turn-based strategy game named The Battle for Wesnoth.

The term caught on and became commonly used on gaming forums in the early and mid-2000s. As seen above, a user named BeefontheBone noted a deterrent placed against "save scumming" in the strategy game Civilization IV.

How Did Attitudes Towards 'Save Scumming' Evolve Over The Years?

Save scumming grew to be a less-derided practice after the rise of casual gaming and after the rise of games where a singular instance could affect the outcome of the entire rest of the game. Discussions about save scumming spread on forums related to video games such as Baldur's Gate and Fallout, when a failed skill check could lead to an undesired outcome affecting the entire course of a questline.

Other video games where RNG or "Random Number Generators" are used to determine random events, like your chance at landing a critical hit or picking up a rare item, also became the subject of memes about save scumming, as seen in the above comic about the video game XCOM 2.

What Are Some Memes About Save Scumming?

For the full history of Save Scumming, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.