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.

 

[CommodoreKong]

Yeah this seems like something that was conceived of back during the height of D&D's popularity with Covid keeping people inside, along with Critical Role and Stranger Things both being very popular, as a way to make more money from D&D players via videogame style micro-transactions, along with another way to sell adventures to DMs instead of actually solving a problem or need D&D players had. I imagine the eventual goal was to all third parties to also sell modules/adventures as well as cosmetics and WotC gets a cut.

I'm not a marketing guru but maybe launching it with a full 5.24 adventure to show off the system and get people to try it would have helped promote it.

Yeah they needed to launch it with a pre-made adventure, and have several more in the works. A 3D VTT would require way more prep work for any DM so you need to have some pre-made stuff for those who don't want to do a lot of prep work.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Yeah they needed to launch it with a pre-made adventure, and have several more in the works. A 3D VTT would require way more prep work for any DM so you need to have some pre-made stuff for those who don't want to do a lot of prep work.

This would have been how they got it rolling, yeah. Free adventure - that's long and detailed and full pre-constructed, and WotC starts building out all the official adventures this way, both going forwards and (more slowly) backwards.

If WotC had done that, I think they could have had something. But at some point someone at WotC decided that was too much like hard work.

 

[robertsconley]

So, here's the thing: the 2d VTT, Maps, works really well, and is already integrated with most of their books, with quite a significant user base. So in Sigil, they have been investing a ton of money...to kind of compete with themselves.

It also competes with Talespire, which incidentally also integrates with Heroforge for 3D models.

 

[CommodoreKong]

I saw a video yesterday about this on YouTube. I wasn't sure if it was clickbait or accurate.

I'm more on the side of needing only 10% to complete the project. Only time will tell if it's three death saves failed dead.

If 30 people was 90% of the team that means they have 3 people left working on it. There's no way Project Sigil is going to continue with that small of a development team, that's maintenance mode/wrapping up development levels of small for a major project like this.

 

[KYRON45]

This is starting to feel like an OGL thread, with laymen arguing against lawyers...

This sentiment is what all threads feel like.

 

[Dante Ravenkin]

I heard about this yesterday from some random YouTube video I found but could find nothing on any news site or forum at the time so I didn't believe it. But, here it is. Really sucks for those laid off. I was looking forward to Sigil's potential but I was also looking forward to 4th edition's VTT-style thing that never came to fruition. That said, Maps is WAY easier to work with than Sigil, so that may be the answer going forward.

 

[Lalato]

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.

Or... in the case of Mac users, like me, you can't download it and use it even if you want to.

 

[Reynard]

This sentiment is what all threads feel like.

Most threads aren't experts vs laymen, no matter how much one feels like an expert after D&Ding for 40 years.

 

[TiQuinn]

I don't think they can have been let go because that'd be 200+ people and we'd have noticed, there'd have been talk.

I suspect it's more like Williams had them on paper intending to hire 250 people or something, and just overstated how many they already had. Then they probably never got beyond 40 or w/e. Even if for some reason she was counting all WotC's "digital product" employees at the time (despite saying 3D VTT) it wouldn't add up to 250 if they only had less than 40 on the 3D VTT.

I would bet if there’s that large of a discrepancy, the extra heads are coming from other departments that had a hand - any hand - in Sigil or VTT, including marketing, legal, etc.

 

[KYRON45]

Most threads aren't experts vs laymen, no matter how much one feels like an expert after D&Ding for 40 years.

I completely agree.
I'm just saying that it always feels that way.