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Veteran Dice Tower reviewer Sam Healey resigns in wake of saying Alex Pretti, Renee Good were to blame for ICE killing them, after comments began impacting review giant’s annual pledge drive
Sam Healey, the veteran Dice Tower reviewer who has contributed to the channel for much of the last 20 years, has resigned after comments he made blaming Alex Pretti and Renee Good for their deaths at the hands of ICE agents began to impact the company’s annual crowdfunding pledge drive.
Healey posted on Facebook and in the comments section of the Dice Tower’s Gamefound campaign yesterday to say he was stepping down from his paid, part-time role at the business, adding that site founder Tom Vasel was “not putting me up to this”.
He said, “I do not want my friends to suffer any longer. Those of you who have cancelled your support because of my presence can feel free to back them once again. They deserve it, and you know it.
“They provide so much content, and they do a great job with everything from daily content creation to putting on no less than three conventions and a cruise each year.
“They deserve your support and with me now out of the way, you should absolutely give it to them without reservation.”
Healey made his comments about Good and Pretti on his Facebook page on January 26, the day after the latter was killed by federal agents during a protest in Minneapolis against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the city.
After sharing a post from American political commentator Armstrong Williams which questioned the judgement of Pretti carrying a concealed firearm at the protest, even though he was legally allowed to do so, Healey began responding to multiple commenters who disagreed with that view.
Replying to one comment which read, “The real issue is ICE executing American citizens on the streets”, Healey responded, “Frankly, the real issue is American citizens being told that it’s okay to illegally impede and/or obstruct legal law enforcement operations because the federal agents aren’t law enforcement officers. That’s the real problem.”
He continued, “We agree that they were needlessly shot. We disagree with where the blame and guilt lie.
These two people should not have put themselves into these situations. They are tragic deaths, make no mistake about that. They could have been prevented by better choices.”
Responding to a separate comment accusing him of victim blaming, Healey wrote, “This isn’t victim blaming. I’m simply stating [Pretti] shouldn’t have been there in the first place, nor should the lady have been that he felt the need to protect.
“He made the choice to go into a volatile situation while carrying, posturing himself against law enforcement officers. From a basic conceal-carry course point of view, he screwed up. That’s not victim blaming, that’s the honest truth. We are ultimately responsible for what we choose to do.”
Two days after that Facebook post negative comments about Healey’s views began appearing on the Dice Tower’s 2026 Pledge Drive on Gamefound, which has been running since January 7 targeting $275,000.
Many of those comments threatened to cancel or hold back support for the pledge drive until the Dice Tower took action over Healey’s public statements, which led to a pushback from other commenters supporting the Dice Tower in not addressing the situation.
The Dice Tower has not made a public statement about Healey’s views, or his resignation. When BoardGameWire contacted Tom Vasel for comment on the situation, a statement on Healey’s time with the Dice Tower, and his decision to leave, he responded, “I don’t give statements about how I deal with my employees. The situation has been dealt with.”
Long-time Contributor
Healey first appeared on the Dice Tower podcast almost exactly 20 years ago, becoming a co-host for about 100 episodes before stepping back from that role in 2009.
He began working full time at the Dice Tower in 2015 across reviews, live-plays and top ten list creation, before leaving four years later for personal reasons which required him to relocate.
Healey joined Darkest Dungeon board game publisher Mythic Games in 2020 as US community director, but left that role two years later amid the company disclosing growing financial problems which ultimately led to the liquidation of the business.
He rejoined the Dice Tower part time in 2024 after the company’s pledge drive that year included his return as a late-announcement $380,000 stretch goal, which the crowdfund managed to beat by $767.
This year’s pledge drive has just passed $281,000 with about 12 hours of the campaign left to run, having cleared its $275,000 goal overnight.
The Dice Tower uses proceeds from its annual crowdfunding drive to pay its ten full-time employees and five part-time staff, saying it gets the majority of its funding each year from the campaign. It also brings in some money from its Patreon, and is currently sponsored by companies including Allplay and Board Game Bliss.
The reviews giant, which has more than 350,000 subscribers on YouTube and has published over 26,000 videos on the site, has been running an annual crowdfund since 2013 – with its debut campaign bringing in just over $69,000 from about 1,400 backers.
Dollars raised through the annual campaign grew steadily for a decade to reach a high of $410,000 in 2023, but fell to about $380,000 the following year and $350,000 in 2025.
Backer numbers have also been falling since a high of nearly 8,500 in 2021, and last year had dropped to more than 40% from that peak to 4,880.
Just over 3,640 backers have supported the campaign so far this year, with 12 hours of the crowdfund remaining. The company is using Gamefound for the crowdfund for the second year in a row, having previously run all of its campaigns on Kickstarter barring a single year on Indiegogo in 2017.
Update 31/1/26: The 2026 pledge drive closed on just over $305,000, down 13% on last year and its lowest level since 2019, while supporter numbers fell 18% to 3,999 – the smallest number of backers in more than a decade.
The Dice Tower has said it plans to use some of the proceeds from this year’s pledge drive to give its employees a cost-of-living raise and improve the lighting and audio across its three studios.
Writing in a community note on the Dice Tower’s YouTube channel on January 28, company founder Tom Vasel listed the goals of the site as being to promote board games, to entertain, to inform and to support the team’s families.
He said, “We are a gaming channel, and my goal is to keep it that way. We aren’t a political, religious, philosophical, or any other type of channel.
“Talk to me in person, and I have thoughts and opinions on many subjects. But that’s not what we want on the Dice Tower channel – we want it to be singularly about gaming.
“Each year when we run our campaign, there is a lot of negative comments that levied at us. This isn’t a “real job”/we were unfair to a game/we are in the pocket of publishers, etc. Despite I feel that our work stands on its own.
“I am proud of what we’ve done, and while we are indeed imperfect people, I believe we’ve created a YouTube channel, podcast, and conventions that are fun and safe for the entire family.
“I look back at where we started twenty years ago, and I hope you can see more improvements and ways we get better.”
A much more fair accounting than I was expecting from the title, and an interesting and informative read. Thanks.
I stand with Sam and totally agree with his take. If he puts up a crowd fund I will donate as I’m sure many others will.
It’s called personal responsibility for a reason. I agree with Sam based on that alone. Did he make a mistake? Debatable. What he did do was exercise personal responsibility for his decision to step down. Do i agree with that decision? Not necessarily, but to protect The Dice Tower…it’s an acceptable loss. But, un unfortunate loss.
another magat jerk who uses his religion to justify horrible actions, horrible words, and a history of unmoral activity, including the theft of millions from gamers. hopefully he’s gone from the industry for good.
While I agree what he said was terrible, it’s important to uphold free speech even when the speech is terrible. People threatened to vote with their wallets and he wasn’t comfortable with that and obviously, from his statement, frustrated.
His statement about his religion doesn’t touch on this. How he came to his own conclusion is only part of his system of morality and should not be associated with an entirety of people.
The rest of what you say is, at least to me, hearsay. I’d be interested in where this evidence is, but on the whole I just hope someone with his opinions about the killings is not someone I hear about again.
Stop. Freedom of speech means that the *government* cannot infringe upon one’s articulation of their opinions. It does not and has never meant that someone can say hateful, offensive, terrible things and not suffer the repercussions of it by, say, losing their job, their family, or their friends for what they said. How are Americans so confused as to what freedom of speech means?
what a simple/single level analysis. I guess you can only play Tic Tac Toe, and lose.
What happened in September? Is there a link to the “dark underbelly” comments?
I had the same question about Sep 2025 and the ‘dark underbelly’. As for the outcome of this whole series of events, I’m a little disappointed that The Dice Tower gave such a terse response to the question. I’m not expecting a ten page outpouring from them, but at least something that acknowledges the difficulty of the situation and their awareness of how their fans, the people funding their channel, reacted.
Yet even in a fairly reasonable article the lies or perhaps ignorance continues.
By law where he was, Alex Pretti was absolutely NOT allowed to be armed. Their law specifically prohibits guns at protests. He also assaulted a vehicle earlier. The biggest mistake was not arresting him then. I don’t know if the shooting was by the book, but I’m weary of people painting this moron as a saint. From the city that brought you St George Floyd…pick better heroes.
Thanks J Todd – which law is that? If you can point me to the statute that shows Minnesota law prohibits guns at protests I’ll gladly update the article, but my research only found such a law applying in other US states.
BS.
And even if that was the law (which it isn’t), breaking the law did not give those Nazis the right to shoot 10 times into his back. Or 3 times in Good’s head.
This is Germany in the 30’s, and you MAGAts are a true lesson about how Hitler come to power.
1: No such law exists
2: Even if it did, this was not an organized protest; it was an organic response to ICE activity.
Several things off with both comments the fist is the two Protesters were not killed while protesting both fatalities happened while they were directly interfering with federal law enforcement. Millions of Americans have protested all over America against the Trump administration and they are fine no one to date in the actual protests has died practicing their constitutional rights. Secant Alex Prettie had the right to carry a gun. His decision to bring that gun and then to interfere with federal law enforcement was indeed reckless. Depending on your perspective he was either justified or not in this action. People will have different views on these two horrible incidents but spreading misinformation on either side should not be acceptable.
My third frustration with the last commit was that the protest are organic. That is blatantly false both individuals were taking part in highly organized protests and disruptive operations. You do not get gas masks , training , busing food housing etc from an organic uprising. You can fully agree and support this political movement but don’t be deceived that this anti Trump movement. is not being organized and funded by his political opponents for political reasons not purely moral ones.
I think defending a murder of someone for merely “interfering” is the tragedy. The interference can also be strongly contested if the shootings were a proper response.
The rest of it is not worth the time to roll my eyes at. Except to type that.
Oh Pepe. You are so uniformed. Letting 10 to 20 million unvetted illegal aliens invade our country (the official term) is of no concern to you? None of the hundreds of women and girls raped and murdered by unvetted illegal aliens concerns you? Did you ever ask yourself why the previous administration allowed this? Do you realize that in 17 out of the 19 states Harris won, no ID is required to vote. Do you realize that counting non-citizens gives blue states more representives in government. Do you know that 80% plus of US citizens want ID requirements to register and to vote. I bet you do not. You are in a propoganda war and you have fallen for it hook line and sinker. Unlike you however I will welcome you when you wake up and realize the truth. (Notice no need to name call when facts are on your side). I am sorry if the facts get in the way of your feelings however.
Sam will be missed. I wish I could back the dice tower more now that I already have. So sad when people can’t put politics aside. They want people to believe what they do and cannot stand when someone else believes differently. Just play the same and enjoy them. Let people believe what they want without fear of a crazy person whose beliefs “matter more”
I agree strongly with this, but look at the comments in this thread where people are attacking others for their beliefs. It’s sadly the norm.