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.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

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.

I'm pretty sure its dead.

You're absolutely right that layoffs after release are routine, even for ongoing "GaaS" (Game as a Service) projects like this, but not 90%. Not 50% even, usually. 20% would be totally plausible for that.

And more to the point, if you just try using Sigil, which you can, you can easily, trivially see that this is not anywhere near a "complete product". This is basically late alpha/early beta levels of development, where most of the features in, at least in some form, but the 1.0 level of content, UI development, usability, and so on are absolutely not there. So these aren't "product basically complete!" layoffs. These are "product abandoned" layoffs, imho.

 

[Nylanfs]

<cough>Master Tools</cough>

 

[Steampunkette]

I'm pretty sure its dead.

You're absolutely right that layoffs after release are routine, even for ongoing "GaaS" (Game as a Service) projects like this, but not 90%. Not 50% even, usually. 20% would be totally plausible for that.

And more to the point, if you just try using Sigil, which you can, you can easily, trivially see that this is not anywhere near a "complete product". This is basically late alpha/early beta levels of development, where most of the features in, at least in some form, but the 1.0 level of content, UI development, usability, and so on are absolutely not there. So these aren't "product basically complete!" layoffs. These are "product abandoned" layoffs, imho.

I've seen mostly positive reviews for it (outside of these forums, at least) with a reference to bugs that need squashing as the big go to complaint.

That said, I didn't know it originally had a 250 member development team at the start. Which indicates that the vast majority of engine-designers were laid off months ago, at this point. THAT is insane.

I'm inclined to agree that it's dead, if that's the case.

 

[MerricB]

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.

It laid off six people.

Six.

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.

Warner Games shuttered Player First Games AFTER the quick death of MultiVersus. (It launched in beta to great acclaim, and then in a baffling decision they closed it down for almost a year. When it came back, no-one cared, and it never regained a player base. It's still going for the 5 people who log on each week).

Meanwhile, Suicide Squad. Yeah.

Warner Games, much like Ubisoft, have been making baffling decision after baffling decision.

####

More generally, the US computer game market is entering very rough times because the cost of making games there is far, far more than in China (and likely Japan and South Korea).

Yes, AAA games have had a lot of problems with bad management - ballooning budgets and development cycles and a lack of attention to feedback (Concord!) But that isn't all of them. Lots of massive successes from bigger and smaller studios.

Just as a side note, Remedy is finally making a profit from Alan Wake 2. It took over a year. Meanwhile Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 was profitable after one day...

 

[AlViking]

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".

Was it 250 people working on Sigil alone or was it 250 for Sigil, DDB and potentially other projects? I'm not sure they ever really made it clear.

In any case if you want every project you join to succeed don't go into IT. In particular don't go into any of the game related aspects of IT.

 

[Osgood]

A 3D tabletop always seemed like and interesting, but niche product to me. I suspect someone at the top just saw monetization possibilities without researching if this was a product that enough people wanted to pay for its development. It's almost like like someone went to a brainstorming session with a list of the tools that were planned for 4E (maybe next we'll get a character visualizer so you can make your own portraits, which I always thought was a cool idea that never got realized from those days).

I rarely run online games--just when weather or illness prevents us from meeting in person--but when I do, I want something that's easy to use. Maps works great for that (especially if I'm running an adventure I own in DDB). Sigil is way more than I want or need--even if it would have reached a point where the published adventures were integrated (and they were clearly a long ways off from that). Best case scenario I could have seen using it for an important boss fight, but that would have been a tough sell since the interface was so different from Maps.

I'd say WotC doesn't know how to handle software development, but given that that Maps and the Character Builder work so well (granted, the CB was pretty much finished when they bought Beyond), I think it says more about leadership and direction. On the one hand, I'm all for taking swings even when they miss, but (to me) this is yet another public example of a leadership failure.

 

[Parmandur]

Why release it at all if they're just going to shut it down?

Hail Mary pass to see if people wanted it, and it didn't work out?

I never really played with either, but I heard more people talking about Beyond's Maps feature, which has to be more efficient to produce.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I've seen mostly positive reviews for it (outside of these forums, at least) with a reference to bugs that need squashing as the big go to complaint.

Why rely on reviews now though? You can download it and have a go.

That you haven't speaks volumes, doesn't it? Not about you, to be clear - about the product! It's free to do so! But people haven't, and people won't, ever, for the most part.

I think the reaction from the vast majority of people who actually do download and open it (a surprisingly painful process) it will be essentially:

1) This is pretty if a bit plain!

2) Wow it sure is surprisingly hard and fiddly work to actually build anything!

3) Huh I don't have very many options, for like, anything (terrain, monsters, character, rotation, etc). (This is with the paid version note! Free is even worse.)

4) I couldn't see myself using this for every session because it'd add literally hours of preparation (even if you got fast with it), and unless you were railroading, you'd need to do tons and tons of extra might-never-get-used prep (rather than just uploading some 2D maps, or drawing them on the fly).

5) Closes down Sigil and never opens it again.

That said, I didn't know it originally had a 250 member development team at the start. Which indicates that the vast majority of engine-designers were laid off months ago, at this point. THAT is insane.

Yeah we discussed the claim at the time, because it was kind of fantastical, like that's AAA videogame numbers. If I find the source again (which Google is doing everything it can to prevent happening, thx Google, you work so great now), I'll link it through.

Maybe the most killer thing is though, is, even if WotC did think it was "finished", it's only on PC. And you do, as a matter of cold fact, need developers to get it on to other platforms. This product cannot succeed as a PC-only product.

I should correct myself that she left in 2023 though, I was thinking it was "last year", but that's 2024 lol.

Was it 250 people working on Sigil alone or was it 250 for Sigil, DDB and potentially other projects? I'm not sure they ever really made it clear.

Beyond has what, like 40 people working on it? So that wouldn't add up. But she was pretty specific at the time. She didn't say "across all WotC digital teams" or something, she said the 3D VTT (it was before it was called Sigil). I was skeptical of the number claimed, though, so god knows.

 

[MerricB]

250 people sounds crazy big for this project. Honestly: I don't believe it.

 

[Parmandur]

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?

Probably the other direction: if 2024 is foing gangbusters on D&D Beyond, which is fully functional and relatively inexpensive to build and maintain, and happily using maps...why invest in a big Unreal product people aren't embracing?