I didn’t post the Penny Arcade shenanigans about Jack Thompson because, well, better heads had done so, and to be fair, I thought y’all might be getting sick of it. But understanding is critical, and so the summation is that Jack Thompson rescinded his offer to give money to charity if people made his crackpot vision of a game once, you know, people turned around and did so in 3 days time (Ol’ Grandma Hardcore was one of many who managed to cobble something together quickly). He claimed his offer was satire.

“I’m not interested and won’t be commenting on the mod. The satirical piece entitled ‘A Modest Video Game Proposal’ was intended to highlight the patent hypocrisy and recklessness exhibited by the video game industry’s willingness to target cops, women, homosexuals, and other groups with some of their violent games. To be fair, though, you can’t expect a bunch of gamers to understand the satire if they think that Jonathon Swift, the author of ‘A Modest Proposal,’ is the name of a new Nike running shoe…

Because, you know, offering to give money to the needy and then rescinding it is funny. So Penny Arcade, whose Child’s Play charity has given nearly half a million dollars worth of goods to the needy, in particular children in hospitals reached into their pockets and gave 10K to charity in Jack’s name (scroll down to ‘You Lose’).

Jack responded by attempting to get the Seattle Police Department to arrest Penny Arcade for harassment.

A Seattle business by the name of Penny Arcade… employs certain personnel who have decided to commence and orchestrate criminal harassment of me by various means… This company has done this because I dared to go on CBS’s 60 Minutes in March and again in July to explain a wrongful death lawsuit I have brought on behalf of two police officers and a police dispatcher in Fayette, Alabama, who were shot in the head and killed by Devin Moore who obsessively trained on Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to kill them.”

“As you may know, this incredibly violent Rockstar Games product is actually a ‘cop-killing’ murder simulator. There are a bunch of computer geeks out there who think that the video game industry has a constitutional right to paint a bullseye on your back and on your officers’ backs… That is what this criminal harassment of me by Penny Arcade is all about. They’re even selling an ‘I Hate Jack Thompson’ t-shirt, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. These idiots have been so careless as to post on their www.pennyarcade.com web site what they are doing regarding the harassment of me.”

For what it’s worth, I love that Jack Thompson exists. His utter randomness and hysteria is now officially to the point where it’s an anchor to the anti-gaming community. Note: Slashdot claims that Penny Arcade has responded with a general post of ‘whatever’ and a picture of the Check they’re giving to charity. I would verify, but Penny Arcade is currently under Slashdot Siege.