Don't save .sav files immediately nor on hard reset

[Grogir]

Kind of PSR specific but this can be used to easily check save info that is normally hidden (for example, igt save for manips, but also pokémon DVs).

[CasualPokePlayer]

The saving sav files to disk immediately was added specifically as a PSR thing (that only occurs for PSR goodroms infact). IIRC, it was originally done as a countermeasure against PC crashes losing save data, with some real example happening in some Red race (I forget the details here). Trying to prevent cheating in this way is frankly pointless anyways, as you can easily just check those details with some CE like program.

[Grogir]

Idk I dont think its a great argument, yes you can always cheat in some way with deep technical knowledge and fishy programs, here you just need to use any save loader and click the file that the emulator literally gives to you. Would this even be considered illegal?
Also if you crash in a race its fucked anyway lol, but yeah you can take the backup save several minutes in the past i guess.

Anyway im pretty indifferent i just wanted to report it

[CasualPokePlayer]

The main crux of the argument is really in either case you're bringing in external programs to do the naughty work. Consider too you can make the same argument against savestates (which making a savestate during a run is not banned afaik, although if you want to take up this argument then logically that would be banned).

Really, if you're peaking at the save in order to know if you got an IGT then immediately do the IGT backup, that itself would be caught right away as there is normally no way to know if you got such an IGT unless you end up hitting the IGT failure. Likewise, you'd immediately gain some suspicion if you save the game immediately after obtaining a Pokemon (there's no reason to do such, as you normally only do that for doing some manip or maybe making a safety save for some fight / resetting for good DVs), but either of those woud likely be far later and would have very dimishing returns for knowing the exact DVs then.

The same deal would apply to savestates, as you get a message with the OSD when making a savestate, so the timing of making a savestate could arise heavy suspicion if it's used in a way that seems potentially nefarious, especially if it's done consistently along multiple runs (so you can't really claim accidental one-off usage then).