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.

 

[Theory of Games]

When I saw a streamed playtest of SIGIL I was stunned. THAT is what they were doing all this time? It .... it was supposed to be more. I was expecting Elden Ring or Dragon's Dogma II or something exciting and NOT what they came up with. I wanted a video game like BG3 but more like D&D.

I wanted a Flying Spur and behind curtain #1 was --- a Toyota Prius. Used. With a bad Carfax.

How could they think THAT was what the community wanted? Plus, they raised the paywall on DDB finally. WotC has become the Activision of the TTRPG industry.

 

[CommodoreKong]

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.

I feel like including the adventures from one of the beginner boxes for free would have been the best way to go.

 

[Remathilis]

Hey, where is all the people who was saying VTT was the future of D&D and WotC was going to discontinue publishing books?

Where did they all go?

 

[Zaukrie]

I agree that just getting 3d minis on maps with a different angle would be great. That's how it looks at home for many..... And something I begged them to start with in sigil. Great UI, great integration with DND beyond, then 3d.....

 

[AlViking]

Hey, where is all the people who was saying VTT was the future of D&D and WotC was going to discontinue publishing books?

Where did they all go?

They switched over to saying DnD's death is imminent because Sigil didn't work out.

 

[LordEntrails]

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.

FYI, Carl is now at SmiteWorks working on Fantasy Grounds. And Adam who used to be at DDB is also at SmiteWorks. Folks might not like how slow FG is at approaching 3D, but they are running a successful VTT business with more employees than most.

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.

(see below)

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.

To me, these two facts point to one thing. Add in that the release had no prior marketing, and was not announced as a Beta (which implies it was a full release), points to one thing to me. Hail Mary. The execs (correctly) deduced that his was a failed project. Management then released what they had knowing they were going to have to fire everyone in a month. And the team hoped and dreamed that their hard work would somehow be a smashing success (but they knew it wouldn't be because they kept referring to it as a Beta).

Sorry folks, but Sigil is dead, the heart just hasn't stopped beating yet. Even if they leave the servers up forever, a few folks are not enough to support a full 3D VTT. Creating assets alone and converting 5E adventures to it takes more people than that. (And they still have tons of development left to do.) If they are not converting their official adventures, then it's dead.

 

[Morrus]

Hey, where is all the people who was saying VTT was the future of D&D and WotC was going to discontinue publishing books?

Where did they all go?

You're conflating two positions. I held (and still hold) the former position, and have talked at length about it on multiple occasions. I have never held the latter.

So I guess the answer to your question is that the group of people you're describing in the centre of that Venn diagram is pretty small, but I expect they're still around. They're basically me, but without the 'discontinue publishing books' part.

My prediction remains the same--walled garden marketplace, powered by D&D Beyond and Maps, with less emphasis on printed books.

 

[Lidgar]

IMO, Sigil was never a good idea. VTT’s have to strike the right balance of being accessible on many types of devices, intuitive and easy to set up and run, and importantly, does not distract from the adventure itself.

From what I saw, Sigil failed to achieve most, if not all these aspects.

 

[jayoungr]

I was expecting Elden Ring or Dragon's Dogma II or something exciting and NOT what they came up with. I wanted a video game like BG3 but more like D&D.

How did you picture that working with a human DM, though? Tabletop D&D and Elden Ring are entirely different genres, even though they have a lot of DNA in common.

 

[Belen]

People being driven to DDB doesn't necessarily corelate to people using Sigil. Especially when the implementation is half assed and, as Christian Hoffner put it "a solution looking for a problem".

3D VTTs are beyond niche. It's something that TTRPG players have dreamed of or thought it would be neat, but if prep on a 2D VTT can be time consuming, a 3D one is next level.

Sigil focused on being pretty first and being practical second.

They should have concentrated on the creation tools first and leverage the community for creating content and eventually setting up a marketplace for the community to sell content. Meanwhile they could've developed in house some official adventures with a couple of free setpieces for people to mess around and get hooked.

But I'm just a TTRPG fan, why would I know what a TTRPG fan wants?

If things were gangbusters, then a company that just stated that they were moving into digital and digital gaming in a big way would not be mass firing a digital gaming team.

I am not saying that 5.5 absolutely tanked, but D&D was largely silent on the latest earnings report and this was after Q1 sales of a new PHB.

There may be more uptick now that the complete 5.5 is out, but it has not been mass adopted in my area and the reaction has been mixed.

The sales data is also mixed with WOTC claiming it is the fastest selling PHB ever but only they have the data as most people are assuming that the majority of people seem to have purchased it via DDB.

I thought Sigil was a great idea although half my group uses IOS so were locked out of it so we could not use it.

I primarily game online now but mostly because my players are in different states so we cannot physically game.

They really have not had time to measure demand for Sigil because they half-released it to market where it is not available on mobile or IOS.

I am not saying that I am right, but demand for Sigil will follow demand for DDB/D&D and if sales for 5.5 were not as expected, then cutting an expensive digital tool would be the first move.