Editing Saved game (section)

===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.