Editing Saved game (section)

==Time and location of saving==
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A video game may allow the user to save at any point of the game at any time. There are also modified versions of this. For example, in the [[GameCube]] game ''[[Eternal Darkness]]'', the player can save at almost any time, but only if no enemies are in the room. To make gaming more engaging, some video games may impose a limit on the number of times a player saves the game. For instance, ''[[IGI 2: Covert Strike|IGI 2]]'' allows only a handful of saves in each mission; ''[[Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne|Max Payne 2]]'' imposes this restriction on the highest level of difficulty.

Some video games only allow the game to be saved at predetermined points in the game, called save points.{{whom|date=January 2023}} (Not to be confused with "[[#Checkpoints|checkpoints]]".) Save points are employed either because the game is too complex to allow saving at any given point or to attempt to make the game more challenging by forcing the player to rely on their skills instead of on the ability to retry indefinitely. Save points are easier to program and thus attractive from a development standpoint.

Some games use a hybrid system where both save anywhere and save points are used. For example, ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' permits saving anywhere when the player is traveling on the world map, but once the player enters a location (e.g. town, cavern or forest), saving is only possible at save points.

===Savescumming===
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Overusing saved games may be seen as unfair and in such a context is referred to as "savescumming". Savescumming makes losing a game impossible because whenever the player loses or is about to lose, a savegame is loaded, effectively turning back time to the situation before the loss. In a video game, this could for example be done when the player loses a battle/race, misses the best performance grading for a level (such as an [[Glossary of video game terms#S|S-rank]]) or runs into an [[unwinnable]] situation by losing anyone or anything needed to continue and win. For example, in a game that features a casino, the player could save the game and then bet all their in-game money on black at a roulette table. If the outcome is black, their money is doubled and the player saves the game again. If the outcome is red (or green), the player disregards this outcome by reloading their last savegame. This allows for an indefinite winning streak.

Game programmers may defend against savescumming by various means, such as checking timestamps. For example, on multiuser Unix systems, ''[[NetHack]]'' uses [[setgid]] to prevent users from copying save files into the necessary directory. Another technique is to use a deterministic, seeded [[pseudorandom number generator]], so that undesired random outcomes cannot be avoided simply by saving and reloading. In this situation, when the player reloads a saved game, 'random' events will occur identically every time – the only way to get a different outcome is to play differently.