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]

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

Sure, which illustrates the other problem. This is only for Windows PC, which is not a workable position for a VTT, especially not one wanting to be a big deal.

 

[Blue]

no, not in hindsight.

This is what? The THIRD attempt?

It's like hiring a forumula 1 racing design team to compete in soap box derby and depding upon race winnings to pay for it.

This time for the third time.

WotC has hit this wall before, eventually someone realizes that gravity is real and is forced to cut their losses and expenses.

As long as Sigil was just a possibility, it was an opportunity for Chris Cox to sell his vision of a $15/mo subscription to play D&D to stockholders.

When you have leadership that swap out every few years so they don't learn from the past mistakes of the company, that sell their vision regardless if it's in-touch with reality that the day-to-day grunts could tell you, you get things like this.

Top brass wanted DnDB + Sigil to be your one stop for D&D.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Top brass wanted DnDB + Sigil to be your one stop for D&D.

Did they though?

That's an open question. Because we don't have the full picture, but the parts of the picture we do have suggest that, at least initially, D&D Beyond and the 3D VTT were completely separate projects, and that the people working on the 3D VTT in the early days were actively opposed to purchasing Sigil. This came out during the whole "leaks leaks leaks" phase of the OGL 2.0 chaos, and was admittedly largely overlooked as it didn't really relate to the OGL 2.0.

Also, undeniably WotC hedged even after officially announcing the 3D VTT about how connected it was going to be to D&D Beyond.

So I suspect there was some conflict about whether one, the other, or both was the intended "destination". Beyond looks like it was the victor of any such conflict in any case.

 

[Crit Hit The Giant]

My take is that Project Sigil is dead. They saw the interest in it - and it was LOW.

(See Concord from last year).

I'm not actually mad at Wizards for this. Which is odd - I'm annoyed at them about enough other things. But stuff like this, which is actually pretty innovative, is also pretty risky. They took the risk, but it's unlikely to pay off.

Software projects fail all the time. They're harder than you think.

I agree - I'm pretty sure it's dead as well.

Since the showcase of Project Sigil at GenCon 2024, it's struggled a lot. I was an Alpha tester and there were definitely some great things with it but there was also a lot of things that had a long ways to go. The fact that they sent out invites to more Beta testers then released it to the public less than a month later tells me that it wasn't doing well.

So it's not dead yet, but with this announcement, I can't see them keeping it, or at least not the way it currently is.

 

[Belen]

This tells me that 5.5 (2024) did not do well.

 

[Blue]

Did they though?

That's an open question. Because we don't have the full picture, but the parts of the picture we do have suggest that, at least initially, D&D Beyond and the 3D VTT were completely separate projects, and that the people working on the 3D VTT in the early days were actively opposed to purchasing Sigil. This came out during the whole "leaks leaks leaks" phase of the OGL 2.0 chaos, and was admittedly largely overlooked as it didn't really relate to the OGL 2.0.

Also, undeniably WotC hedged even after officially announcing the 3D VTT about how connected it was going to be to D&D Beyond.

So I suspect there was some conflict about whether one, the other, or both was the intended "destination". Beyond looks like it was the victor of any such conflict in any case.

You're right, let me restate:

Top brass wants everywhere you pay money to play D&D to feed back to them.

If Sigil, the original 3D VTT, or Maps on DnDBeyond is it, that's fine.

But money spent by hobbyists to play D&D that goes elsewhere, they either want a finger in that pie or to own it and get the whole stream.

 

[Blue]

This tells me that 5.5 (2024) did not do well.

Care to unpack that? I'm not seeing the correlation you are stating.

 

[Crit Hit The Giant]

Did they though?

That's an open question. Because we don't have the full picture, but the parts of the picture we do have suggest that, at least initially, D&D Beyond and the 3D VTT were completely separate projects, and that the people working on the 3D VTT in the early days were actively opposed to purchasing Sigil. This came out during the whole "leaks leaks leaks" phase of the OGL 2.0 chaos, and was admittedly largely overlooked as it didn't really relate to the OGL 2.0.

Also, undeniably WotC hedged even after officially announcing the 3D VTT about how connected it was going to be to D&D Beyond.

So I suspect there was some conflict about whether one, the other, or both was the intended "destination". Beyond looks like it was the victor of any such conflict in any case.

Sigil was supposed to integrate with D&D Beyond. I don't know if it was designed to be able to play without D&D Beyond or not, but they were building it so that you can pull in your character sheet from DDB (although they were still having issues with it cooperating fully).

I think they wanted it to at least be an option for Sigil and DDB to be all you need, but I don't get the sense they were going to force everyone in that direction, either.

 

[Belen]

Care to unpack that? I'm not seeing the correlation you are stating.

Sure. There have been rumors that it was not selling well for weeks and if it was gangbusters and driving people to DDB, then they would not so quickly abandon Sigil.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This tells me that 5.5 (2024) did not do well.

But probably in the 4e "not meeting crazy WotC expectations of sales" sense.