A closer look
Warren Robinett created the very first video game Easter egg in the 1980 Atari game Adventure purely as an act of massive, petty corporate defiance against his terrible bosses; Atari had a strict policy of never crediting developers to prevent competing companies from poaching their talent, treating their highly skilled software engineers essentially like anonymous assembly line workers; furious at this blatant disrespect, Robinett secretly programmed a hidden room in the game containing the flashing text Created by Warren Robinett, forcing kids to literally navigate an invisible maze just to see his byline, and by the time Atari executives discovered the rogue self-promotion, he had already quit, leaving them with an incredibly expensive recall choice or just pretending the rebellious hidden room was a fun feature for the players
