The studio behind the adventure game Gone Home, The Fullbright Company, has released a statement detailing their reasons for boycotting the PAX Prime expo.
The game was originally accepted to be part of the Indie Megabooth, but the studio has since decided to follow their collective conscience and decline their place at the event, due to their opinion of Penny Arcade's Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik.
The statement, posted by Fullbright's Steve Gaynor, detailed their reasoning: "First there was the entire "Dickwolves" debacle, during which Mike said that it "felt pretty good" to "support rape culture."
Then there were the Penny Arcade Kickstarters, one of which offered to let backers pay them $7,500 to work as a Penny Arcade intern for a day."
He then went on to explain further: "We believe that people's opinions and actions on social issues and business ethics are important. We believe that agreeing to pay the organizers of PAX over $1,000 for booth space, and to present our game on their showfloor for four days, provides explicit support for and tacit approval of their publicly demonstrated positions on these subjects. And we have finally come to the conclusion that we cannot support Jerry, Mike, and their organization by participating in this event."
"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."
Gone Home is the first game from a studio who came together following their collective work on the Minerva's Den DLC for Bioshock 2, and it's about exploring an empty family home and discovering what has happened to the people who live there. The title was a finalist in the Excellence in Narrative category at this year's IGF.