When I accidentally tell an NPC I don’t care about their dead father because I clicked the wrong dialogue option, I reload.

When I miss a golden opportunity for a sneak attack, I reload.

When I accidentally aggro a group of goblins while at half health, I definitely reload. 

And you might, too. 

The practice has a name: save-scumming. Saving before a decision and reloading if the outcome isn’t desirable. The term itself carries a sense of moral judgement, as if hitting the reload button marks a departure from an ethical mode of playing video games. Players often describe it as cheating or cowardice, insinuating a lack of integrity in those that do save-scum. It is not to simply save but to save improperly. To use the system in a way that feels somehow dishonest.

But dishonest to whom? 

Unlike cheat codes, save-scumming doesn’t often break a game’s rules. Games are systems, puzzles to solve and master. We already retry bosses, levels, and challenges. Who’s to say dialogue choices are any different? 

On the other hand, you might argue that choices carry no meaning if one can reverse the outcome without any consequences. In games, failure creates unique narratives for players to engage with. Reloading when you make the “wrong” choice can take the fun out of making difficult decisions, optimizing one’s game but removing a key part of the experience: uncertainty, mistakes, and spontaneity of gameplay. 

It comes down to a distinction between intention and outcome. When you misclick or misunderstand an option, reloading understandably feels justified; the game has failed to represent your choice. There are cases, however, when you might understand the choice but reject the outcome. A character died or a roll failed, and you are no longer correcting communication—you’re rewriting consequences. 

There are plenty of motivations for save-scumming, whether you have a perfectionist  mindset, fear of missing content, or emotional attachment to the characters. It might trace back to a desire for authorship. One could reasonably wonder whether players reload because they want success, or because they want control. 

Save-scumming allows the player a chance to rewrite their character’s story, asserting authorship over a narrative that is partially outside of their control. 

Despite this, some players deliberately remove the ability to reload by playing roguelikes or games that prevent reloading in certain modes. One might argue that meaning emerges from commitment to your decisions and trust in the game’s system. Even further, consequences become real when they cannot be easily undone. 

Still, save-scumming, whether ethical or not, has become a common practice in the gaming world, especially in RPGs. Perhaps the prevalence of this practice reveals a human discomfort with uncertainty or reflects a modern digital life where most things can be edited, deleted, and revised. Or, perhaps, it demonstrates a reality for many players: that games are uniquely capable of letting us explore alternate selves and histories. So, when we reload a save, are we merely escaping consequences or exercising the agency that games were designed to provide?