Project Sigil 90% Of D&D’s Project Sigil Team Laid Off

Reports are coming in of a swathe of layoffs at Wizards of the Coast, constituting 90% of the team of the new Project Sigil virtual tabletop platform. In all, over 30 people have been laid off, leaving a team of around 3 people.

Sigil is still in beta, only recently made public three weeks ago. Recent reports indicated that the scope of the project was seemingly being cut back.

WotC’s Andy Collins—who has worked on multiple editions of D&D and other WotC TTRPGs going back to 1996—reported via LinkedIn that he was one of those laid off. He indicated that the small team left behind would continue to work on the project.

More news as it comes in.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Huh. It hadn't been going well, and the press around it was almost non-existent. I think I only saw discussion about it here. But it's still in a public beta. And WotC has always had a hard time with software products. Surely 10% of the team is unable to finish it.

I wonder if they have particular economic concerns given the current trade war? Or maybe they're buying another VTT? Maybe 5e 2024 sales have also been less impressive than we were led to believe?

 

[DarkCrisis]

If I ran an online game I’d try to use it.

But I don’t.

 

[mamba]

Maybe 5e 2024 sales have also been less impressive than we were led to believe?

probably, given that D&D was not mentioned once in their Q4 report, but I doubt D&D sales had something to do with this.

You still have a huge player base to sell to, it’s not just new players. Sigil failed on its own.

 

[EthanSental]

I was having fun with it…hopefully it’s the 90% that got it to this point, the remaining 10 are the tweakers and people,too,add features slowly over time. I’m not throwing in the towel yet on it but realize I might be in the minority of optimistic players right now for it.

Edit ~ I don’t know the man power needed for this but look at tabletopconnect from 2015 kickstarter. That was one guy working in that same style 3D vtt. Is or was 30 people really need to turn out a system that 1 guy did in similar time frame? Maybe it’s needed for the start up but not now is my kinda point.

 

[Remathilis]

Sigil released at the WORST time to be doing this. The United States is attempting economic suicide right now with tariffs and trade wars, and the markets are dropping due to the uncertainty. Hasbro, who will be heavily affected by Chinese tariffs, is probably looking to scale back overhead and this is an easy pick. It doesn't even reflect on the quality of the project: NetEase just closed divisions of its studio that was working on the massively successful Marvel Rivals a month ago. Warner Games has shuttered most of its gaming division not named Netherrealm, leading to the quick death of MultiVersus. Triple A gaming is in a bad spot right now and the further the market slides into recession (dragging global markets with it) the worse it's going to get.

 

[DEFCON 1]

This is a case where in hindsight they might have been better starting small and then building out... which I think they technically could still do with Maps.

Right now with Maps the board is flat and top-down, with tokens used for monsters and PCs (like most VTTs). But it could be possible to take the flat map image and put it on a X-Y-Z axis spinner so that you could rotate the map to multiple angles, for instance a Baldur's Gate 3/4 angle down perspective (amongst others). Doing this would allow them to incorporate their 3D modeling programming for PCs to use in Maps (for those players that might want to design / paint and use their own online digital miniature.

That's where I think the extra money to WotC from players would most likely come from... digital PC miniatures that can be built to their designs. Making PCs a la HeroForge to use in their VTT would probably have more of an economic viability than most other assets they could supply. Because the actual playing surface itself? Not as much.

So start with the flat Maps for the tabletop but allow 3D PC minis to be used on it (like most at-home players already do with actually minis on poster maps or hand-drawn wet/dry erase boards.) Then later on if the digital PC mini market has some success... you could start building upon the Maps program itself and adding new improvements slowly, like raising/lowering map surfaces to give the maps different levels, and then adding in more 3D models like trees and walls over time.

 

[Koloth]

Some folks have mentioned tariffs but it seems odd to cancel or mostly cancel a project that is tariff free if that project was otherwise doing well. My guess is the cost of continuing development was high enough and the interest so far was low enough that some number crunchers said kill it. Since a few folks were kept on, possible Hasbro is in talks with someone to sell off various aspects of the Sigil IP to recover some of the investment. Or to roll the most popular parts into their existing product line(s).

 

[aiouh]

Release unfinished product to everyone's surprise

Fires 90% of team a few weeks later

Yeah that tracks.

 

[Steampunkette]

It may be that Project Sigil is dead...

It may also be that the bulk of the design work is completed and at this point it's mostly a matter of continuing to add art assets while bug-squashing and the bulk of the team is no longer required to build the code-base or establish new mechanical functionality.

It's very common in the game design industry, and if we're honest a lot of industries of late, to lay off staff as soon as their primary work is done in order to save money even while a project is still being completed or worked on.

The fact that Andy Collins speaks to the "Full experience we imagined" may refer to design goal differences between the development team and management. Where management wanted a narrow enough structure to cover what they expected people wanted without costing WotC as much money, while the development team had a much broader view of what people needed and wanted at a higher price point.

The number of games we've -all- seen where that's the case is too damned high.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

@Ruin Explorer: What's your take on this? Is this par for the course with software development, or is it a sign that WotC doesn't see Sigil as worth investing in after all?

Oh its dead.

I predicted this when they stealth-dropped the "launch" of Sigil instead of doing an open beta or the like. That is usually a very bad sign - and combined with "we fired 90% of the team", uhhhh, yeah that's done.

Interesting too that 30 developers is "90% of the team" when under Cynthia Williams they had 250 people (according to her) working on this project - I imagine they must have already dropped the team size drastically.

When genuinely completed projects launch it is normal to ditch some number of developers, even if you're continuing development - like even World of Warcraft, about 10-20% of the people who worked on it left Blizzard when it launched. But 90%? Nah. That's "We're done with this".