If you don't have the money, you can always smash an ATM. In Dead Space 2, that is. I'm talking about the video game Dead Space 2. Now, 13 years after the game's release, players have stumbled upon the discovery that performing a bit of blow (or ballistic) maintenance on the various inanimate objects in the game can reap big rewards.

As GamesRadar discovered, a Reddit user named wetodd1337 recently found that firing a couple of shots into an ATM in Dead Space 2 can yield substantial financial rewards. Specifically, shooting at a cash machine will get you 10,000 credits for free. Also, if you value health over wealth, you can smash a medical station and recharge your time-draining stasis module for free.

None of this would be very interesting, if not news to fans of the game more than a decade after its release: replies to wetodd1337's post are filled with users looking puzzled and shouting "Wait, what?"

"...... What can you do!" was the top voted comment in this thread from user madmechanicmobile, and this sentiment continues almost unabated in the next 200+ replies.

"I'm so surprised because I've wasted my days on these games," said Sirbuttsavage (though I doubt his knighthood is real), and one poster who claims to have worked as a visual effects artist on the "Dead Space" games also did not know about this trick He claims to have been unaware of the trick.

Now, this trick is news to many "Dead Space 2" players in 2024, but that does not mean it was the first time it was discovered. A search reveals a thread titled "ATMs and Vending Machines" in GameFAQs from the time of DS2's release. In it, user TheSwedishChef warns fellow fans of the ATM trick, and a familiar string of replies follows: "HeroicBloodshed says. Core_Of_Stuff: "I was unaware ATM existed."

So perhaps this is trapped in a kind of secret cycle, forever looping between discovery and obscurity. My point is that we will see you in 13 years when the denizens of neo-TikTok will discover this trick again.