Has Wizards of the Coast Given Up on Sigil?

Sigil seems destined to a slow, spiraling demise after layoffs hit the team overseeing the project. Overnight, news broke that approximately 90% of the team responsible for building Sigil, Wizards of the Coast's new VTT, was let go shortly after the system's public launch. The version of Sigil made available to the public was clearly a work in progress - not only did it require a computer with significant specs to run, it was also only available on Windows computers. The layoffs are the latest sign that Sigil was a solution in search of a problem, a project with no clear endgoal other than to serve as a shinier version of tools already existing for D&D players. EN World has reached out to Wizards for comment about the layoffs.

Project Sigil was initially announced as part of the One D&D initiative back in August 2022. The VTT was supposed to serve as a new entry point for D&D, with cross compatibility with D&D Beyond and additional functionality with D&D's ruleset to make the game easier to play. However, even the initial announcement seemed to lack a strong elevator pitch, other than offering a shinier 3D VTT compared to Roll20 or Foundry. However, many players and D&D commentators immediately pointed out the likely monetization that came with this project, with miniatures, adventures, and even core classes all up for grabs in terms of microtransactions.



Sigil's development continued for over two years, with Wizards offering press and fans new looks at the in-development project at several high-profile events. A Gen Con D&D Live show utilized Sigil for a dragon vs. dragon encounter featuring Baldur's Gate 3 characters (played by their voice actors) caught in the middle. However, the use of Sigil stunted the live show experience, turning a boisterous and raunchy show into a lifeless technical glitch-filled slog. With the players focused on the computer and constantly calling for aid, it was a damning indictment of what Sigil could do to a D&D session.



In early 2025, EN World was invited to a D&D press event at Wizards' headquarters in Renton, WA. The event included an hour-long look at Sigil, which was billed as more of a level builder than a traditional VTT. While the designers showed off how relatively easy it was to build a quick encounter within Sigil, they admitted that most tables wouldn't use the VTT to run every encounter. They also couldn't answer fundamental questions about the VTT, such as monetization or what the design goals for the VTT was. Again, it very much felt like a solution for a problem that hadn't been introduced. At one point, the designer noted that their plan for Sigil's development was largely dependent on what users actually wanted in the system and expressed hope that users could use the VTT for systems beyond D&D 5E. It was also pointed out to developers that there was significant crossover with Maps, a D&D Beyond feature that used 2D maps and tokens that seemed to be far easier to implement with the release of new D&D products. Other than acknowledging the overlap and stating that the two systems worked differently, there wasn't a clear answer as to why Wizards was developing two VTT-esque products at the same time.

Sigil launched in February 2025 as something as a surprise. While a longer beta period was originally planned, the full launch of the project was instead announced via a 140-word press release. The project was limited to D&D Beyond subscribers, with a paid subscription needed to unlock full services. The strangely terse press release and muted launch had all the makings of a market dump - that Wizards of the Coast was cutting its losses after spending significant resources trying to build a system with no clear-cut audience or goal in mind.

As of now, it's unclear how Sigil will be supported moving forward - will it roll out new set pieces and miniatures as new adventures and content with the upcoming Dragon Delves launch? Will it get any significant updates at all now that there's only a handful of employees left to work on the project? Or is Sigil destined to fade into obscurity, the latest in a series of failed online products headed by Wizards that was meant to launch alongside new editions. Only time will tell.

 

[Emmetation]

I have to say I disagree, at least terms of functionality.

We had a character builder that:

A) Worked better and had better usability than Beyond's one.

B) Automatically had ALL mechanical content in it.

C) Only required one person to subscribe.

We had a monster builder that:

A) Actually worked automatically and easily, and had guidelines. Whereas Beyond is just HTML, essentially. And damn hard work.

B) Could pull in information from multiple different monsters.

C) So you could reskin a monster and/or give it extra abilities or level it up in minutes, in some cases even seconds. This is simply not possible with Beyond.

We had a rules encyclopedia where:

A) The search actually worked and reliably found what you were looking for.

B) All the rules were included for the price of the subscription. Not just what you'd purchased/linked.

So frankly whilst it was a lot less attractive visually than Beyond, I think the actual product was significant superior as a customer offering.

The one thing that was disastrously bad though was billing. WotC had Digital River doing the billing, and they were completely incompetent, I mean just terrible. They'd do stuff like double-bill you randomly, fail to let you log in, and generally were incredibly painful to work with. When I complained about their double-billing at one point they double-refunded me (rather than just refunding me the extra billing), and refunded me for more months than I said, so this didn't even work to their advantage!

You know what, I actually forgot half of that stuff. You're dead right. I can't remember though, did it launch with all that? I think it took a while to get there.

 

[jgsugden]

I see a few paths forward:

1.) Sigil is going to fade out, but they'll try to get some money here and there to offset losses. We'll see a more drastic version of the reduction in service we saw with D&DBeyond where we see more and more things go unimplemented.
2.) Sigil will be replaced by a purchased option that works better. The 3 people are being retained to provide the new external group with continuity of information to assist with integration/overwriting of the existing Sigil.
3.) They are planning to go AI heavy and think they can cut down to 10% staff by using AI. This option includes the possibility that this could work, or that it is impossible but some suit sold it so that they could get a bigger bonus before they left Hasbro.

Either way, I expect we'll get some press release very soon.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

did it launch with all that?

There was no monster builder at launch, I think that arrived slightly before the monster math got corrected, because I remember the math on it got corrected at one point and it wasn't long after I started using it.

The other two elements I am 90% confident existed at launch and functioned essentially the same way at launch.

Oh I forgot the other big flaw it had though - Silverlight - bloody Silverlight. It was definitely used for the rule encylopedia and I think for the character and monster builders too. In retrospect it turned out to be a bad decision because it was a PITA to work with and I don't think it could even install on every platform. It wasn't an insane decision - Netflix and Prime also used Silverlight, for example, in that era. But it was a flash-in-the-pan tech. I don't think it ever made it to Android maybe (it did work in Safari tho). I seem to recall us having to use laptops to access the encyclopedia, not phones.

 

[Staffan]

I think part of the issue is the same that at least partially caused the OGL debacle: management sees people making money using "their" stuff and go "That money should be ours!". But they ignore that the other people are actually doing work for that money, and that they're probably better at that type of work than Wizards are. So when Wizards tries to compete with and/or stop third-party folks, things tend not to go well.

 

[mamba]

So have they decided that they can't do that now? What changed? Why did they pretty much fire the development team?

we can only guess, but from my perspective this thing was way behind schedule and I assume the reaction it received once it did limp over the line to public availability was not making a case for throwing more good money after bad money

 

[Queer Venger]

D&D Beyond was only built to create characters and they missed the boat to make it more usable to DMs. Shame that's the case. 10+ years after, DDB is still that, another wasted opportunity; build up hype, draw in subscribers, layoff your Dev team; doesn't surprise me this is tanking.

 

[aiouh]

Because WotC have had a consistently terrible digital strategy over decades at this point and buying D&D Beyond was a mere island of sanity in a sea of awful digital-related decisions? Can't expect lightning to strike twice!

Magic the Gathering Arena and Magic the Gathering Online are two fantastic pieces of software.
I guess that then every D&D related decision has to be terrible to balance it out.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I have to say I disagree, at least terms of functionality.

We had a character builder that:

A) Worked better and had better usability than Beyond's one.

B) Automatically had ALL mechanical content in it.

C) Only required one person to subscribe.

We had a monster builder that:

A) Actually worked automatically and easily, and had guidelines. Whereas Beyond is just HTML, essentially. And damn hard work.

B) Could pull in information from multiple different monsters.

C) So you could reskin a monster and/or give it extra abilities or level it up in minutes, in some cases even seconds. This is simply not possible with Beyond.

We had a rules encyclopedia where:

A) The search actually worked and reliably found what you were looking for.

B) All the rules were included for the price of the subscription. Not just what you'd purchased/linked.

So frankly whilst it was a lot less attractive visually than Beyond, I think the actual product was significant superior as a customer offering.

The one thing that was disastrously bad though was billing. WotC had Digital River doing the billing, and they were completely incompetent, I mean just terrible. They'd do stuff like double-bill you randomly, fail to let you log in, and generally were incredibly painful to work with. When I complained about their double-billing at one point they double-refunded me (rather than just refunding me the extra billing), and refunded me for more months than I said, so this didn't even work to their advantage!

Where is all of that now?

 

[UngainlyTitan]

You forgot to mention the DDI's use of Silverlight.

Silverlight was not a showstopper, it was a mistake, but the application could have been migrated to the web.

 

[kenada]

This sounds like an MMO launch: staff up to develop the game, release it then have layoffs to cut costs, hope the launch content is enough to generate a revenue stream to maintain the game while also generating enough of a return on investment. At least Sigil is tied into the D&D Beyond subscription instrad of having its own.