8 Most Spiteful Video Game Easter Eggs Ever

The highly irreverent 1989 adventure game Space Quest III is famous for its self-referential humour, and one of its best easter eggs is actually a pretty serious jab aimed directly at the game's publisher, Sierra Entertainment.

Space Quest III features a video game company called ScumSoft, which has abducted two game designers and is forcing them to make horrible games against their will. At one point, the player must infiltrate ScumSoft HQ and rescue the two designers, giving us a glimpse at the dire workplace culture the company has fostered: a cramped office area consisting of dozens of identical cubicles, with the hallways being patrolled by whip-cracking executives.

For the longest time, many fans assumed that ScumSoft was a dig at LucasArts (who, at the time, was Sierra's rival in the adventure game genre), a company that just so happened to utilise an engine with the unfortunate acronym "SCUMM".

However, this isn't the case. As confirmed by Space Quest co-creator Scott Murphy, ScumSoft is actually a reference to "the evil side" that Sierra was developing at the time. Murphy notes that he was "burned out" by the time he stopped working for them, and based on ScumSoft's depiction in the game, Murphy clearly believed that Sierra was slowly becoming a rather undesirable studio to work for.

And so, he did one of the only things he could: he used Space Quest III as a platform to call them out. Brilliant.