Penny Arcade spent a good part of last week with its foot in its mouth.

First, the Penny Arcade eXpo (PAX) Australia programming was announced, including a panel titled "Why So Serious?" that intended to examine whether criticism had sucked the fun out of gaming, complaining that "any titillation gets called out as sexist or misogynistic and involve any antagonist race other than Anglo-Saxons and you’re a racist."

It was a tone-deaf panel concept at best, particularly in the aftermath of rape jokes at E3 and less than a year after #1ReasonWhy flooded across Twitter. Audiences and critics were quick to speak up; the panel description has since been changed, and the PAX Australia communications director addressed the controversy on his personal blog, although the question of why it was approved in the first place has yet to be addressed.

And then, artist Mike Krahulik—"Gabe" of the comic strip, who had responded to the panel controversy by saying "we try and let pretty much anyone have a space to talk," posted a series of increasingly transphobic tweets in response to a Kotaku article. Between the two, something that had been building up for years reached a breaking point. On Twitter, game developers and journalists began to publicly question their and others' plans to attend PAX. And even Penny Arcade Report's Ben Kuchera responded, tweeting "this isn't what we should be about and it makes me sad."

On one hand, PAX is the largest end-user gaming show in the world, a nexus for professionals and fans alike; and, critically, a show that's build a reputation as unusually progressive, focusing programming on marginalized communities in gaming culture, banning booth babes, and taking a hard-line stance on direct harassment. On the other hand, those values aren't always resonant with the behavior of its founders and hosts, especially Mike Krahulik. And, while they may argue that PAX belongs to the community, Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins are still very much the faces of both convention and community. So to what extent does attending the show as a professional or covering it as a journalist translate to tacit approval of—or even complicity with—their actions?

The Fullbright Company, a rising independent studio, was the first and most visible group to pull out of PAX. In a measured open letter, Fullbright co-founder Steve Gaynor addressed the company's decision, and their reasons:

"We are a four-person team. Two of us are women and one of us is gay. Gone Home deals in part with LGBT issues. This stuff is important to us, on a lot of different levels. And Penny Arcade is not an entity that we feel welcomed by or comfortable operating alongside."

Wired spoke to Gaynor further about the decision to not to exhibit Gone Home at PAX—and what it might take for the studio to consider returning. "I don't know," Gaynor told Wired. "It's not even something I've thought of, because it's not really about us wanting to change them or their organization, or make them cater to us, or anything." He emphasized again what he'd written in the open letter, and what journalists, developers, and fans had been echoing since the most recent scandals: the issue isn't Penny Arcade's recent actions so much as the history and attitude they reflect.

Adam Merrifield / Flickr

Mike Krahulik is obviously well aware of the tendency of a platform to bring out the worst in people, especially online—his "Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory," which postulates that the combination of a normal person, anonymity, and an audience results in "a total fuckwad" has been an internet favorite since 2004. He's also clearly familiar with the impact that bullying can have. He's written before about being bullied as a kid, and his own intolerance of internet bullies: "I will personally burn everything I’ve made to the fucking ground if I think I can catch them in the flames," and based on the impact his public battles had and continue to have on his company's reputation, he meant it.

But what Krahulik—like a lot of the self-identified "geek" community—doesn't seem to understand is that a history as a target doesn't translate to license to shoot wherever his own crosshairs happen to fall. It's one thing to smack down notorious bully Harlan Ellison or take on rampaging anti-video game lawyer Jack Thompson at the height of his media popularity; it's another to go out of your way to mock rape survivors and transwomen and encourage your audience to do the same.

Once you command a readership the size of Penny Arcade's, you no longer get to be the scrappy hero in your personal David and Goliath narrative—and you run the very real risk of becoming somebody else's Goliath. There's an aphorism in comedy, "don't punch down"–don't attack a target smaller or less powerful than you. The flip side of getting big? There are fewer acceptable targets—which is the way it should be.

And because Penny Arcade is a brand built around Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, the implications are larger than simply personal. As Daniel Kaszor wrote last week, you can't insist on being the face of every aspect of your company and not expect your personal actions to then reflect on the larger business. In a very real way, Krahulik and Holkins are the charity Child's Play. They are PAX. They've maintained personal ownership of and presence in those institutions and as a result, what they say and do impacts public perception of the brands.

Krahulik subsequently apologized and promised to make a significant donation to The Trevor Project, an organization that provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth. As Krahulik himself wrote in a 2011 post, "there's a big difference between being sorry and being sorry you got caught." Only time and Krahulik's future actions will tell which applies here.

Wired reached out to Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins for comment but received no response.