From save scumming to cheats, players weigh in on their biggest ‘gaming sins’

We’ve all done stuff in video games we aren’t proud of, and sometimes we repeat that same thing over and over again. This is what some would call “gaming sins,” and a recent Reddit thread saw numerous players come out to express their most severely sinful acts in games.

The round of confession came about in a Feb. 26 Reddit thread where thousands of players weighed in on their biggest gaming sins. The original poster themself led by example and admitted their use of cheats to avoid inventory restrictions almost every time they encountered such a system. Seeing as almost every game with weight or inventory size limits has a mod removing them, I’d say this is a fairly common sin, especially in RPGs.

The top commenter noted how thy always ends up playing the same playthrough even though they want to start a new and fresh adventure. They make the same choices, with the same NPCs, and end up going for the exact same build as the previous run. Another user said they opt for save scumming, but only in “certain” singleplayer titles. I myself find this to be my most frequent gaming sin, especially in punishing titles like Kenshi or Europa Universalis IV where I cannot bear to carry the weight of my own (wrong) actions. Baldur’s Gate 3 players also used save scumming so much to get the best outcomes, it turned into an outright controversy with some saying it ruins the whole experience.

But perhaps the greatest of all sins, as one player in the thread described it, is leaving your entire backlog of games wide in the open and unplayed. Compulsive purchasing is a real thing regarding video games, where you’d hoard so many of them that you have no idea what to play next. And then you end up buying the latest fad and that old purchase is left in the dust, perhaps forever.

The good news is you can still redeem yourself of all these sins (except, maybe, the save scumming) by doing yourself a favor and experiencing games to the fullest—even with those pesky restrictions . And also buying only that which you’ll certainly play.