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.

 

[CleverNickName]

That said:

The flashy 3D animations and graphics engine look snazzy, though. Maybe they can sell it to Roll20?

 

[Zaukrie]

I am not concerned about DDB. I worked closely with several software developers in publishing and this is just normal behavior.

The software is making money now and improving the database is going to be a low priority versus adding new content that makes more money.

A lot of development teams tied to publishing are great devs but they often lack operational knowledge that would really assist in improving the customer experience.

For instance, a toggle that flipped between 5.0 and 5.5. They already have the functionality for other content so that should have been easy and should still be easy but they do not earn money by fixing it.

It is the same with improving search functionality. It is not a money making improvement.

Fair points.

 

[Reynard]

I've been playing D&D from as early as 1e and watched Gary Gygax, TSR and WoTC. I can tell you this, WoTC is like watching a Pirate ship battling with itself. They copied old modules, making them more expensive and ignoring fresh writters with new ideas. They even tried to stifle independent published works for D&D, which would have probably made them a lot of money if they had accepted the fresh ideas in the first place. Gary said the most important thing about D&D is to have fun. That's what Wizards lost and Hasbro too. You're a gaming and toy company, have fun and love what you do. Maybe the board members have grown to old and greedy to remember what it's like to play a fun game.

First of all, you are cherry picking "what gary said." Gary said a lot of things, depending on audience, context and his own state of life and mind. He DID say have fun. he also said PLAY BYT HE RULES OR ELSE!

Second, I see this is your first post. You may find that coming in hot and calling WotC all kinds of names will not make you many friends.

 

[mamba]

They have had plenty of time to improve DDB since purchase. The poor 5.5 tools release shows they did not prioritize it.

I know they did not prioritize it, but their priorities recently seem to have shifted

I doubt they will add resources to it.

I am not counting on it, it was more a hypothetical in case you want to see anything positive in this

 

[cranberry]

First of all, you are cherry picking "what gary said." Gary said a lot of things, depending on audience, context and his own state of life and mind. He DID say have fun. he also said PLAY BYT HE RULES OR ELSE!

Second, I see this is your first post. You may find that coming in hot and calling WotC all kinds of names will not make you many friends.

Uh oh, someone mentioned GG.

I think the D&D community needs it's own version of the Godwin law.

 

[CommodoreKong]

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.

Yeah this is pretty big. If 5.5 was doing really well Hasbro would be shouting about it in their financial reports. I do think it's likely 5.5 underperformed compared to what they were expecting or spent on it (especially considering the salaries of software developers isn't cheap).

I'm guessing a lot of plans were made and budgets were set during early covid when you had DND at what was likely peak popularity with lots of people playing due to covid along with the popularity of Stranger Things and Critical Roll. WotC and Hasbro were likely expecting 5.5 to catapult the game to even higher success that just didn't happen, and I have my doubts that 5.5 got close to the heights of Covid success. We've seen the same thing in the videogame industry as well.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Or maybe they're buying another VTT?

The time to buy another VTT was before they spent all the money on this. Talespire is right there and has 99% of what Sigil was supposed to one day have.

 

[Reynard]

Maybe we could move the weekly Sky Is Falling gesticulations to their own thread?

 

[CM]

Had zero interest in Sigil, want them to focus on getting features added to DDB that are still absent

 

[SteveC]

s it unlike them to put things into other people's hands? They have more and more third party products for sale on DnDBeyond which they purchased after it was proven to work. Meanwhile a simple online tool like Maps makes sense for those that want a easy to use VTT. Most DnD games have been developed by other companies as far as I know.

My own experience with VTTs is limited mostly to COVID times but when I played with Maps it was much easier to use than most other tools. I don't need or want a bunch of automation or anything particularly fancy, just give me something to replace my mat and minis. For people that do want more there's plenty of options. It seems like they were going for the low end simplistic with Maps and the high end visually cool Sigil only to find that Sigil was too costly and wasn't a big enough draw. Maybe someday they'll purchase a Foundry or similar VTT, I just don't see how offloading development cost and risks while still reaping licensing fees is necessarily a bad thing.

The draw with third party publishers was to get into that walled garden of D&D Beyond and have it able to run with Sigil. If you have a VTT that's fully integrated with D&D Beyond, so you have all your game in one spot, that's fantastic for third party companies. That's WotC building the brand. Back when the OGL crisis happened, I thought "why don't you just integrate them to your own product so there's a value to the producer (being inside the garden) and you get a share of the profit." I believe that was the goal once they started heading in this direction with Sigil.

But that's really messed up because, although it's not a bad free product, Maps is in no way ready to be the focus of your online presence. That's obviously just my opinion, and I'm not trying to say anything about people who like it, it's just not the way to grow the brand to the levels WotC has been talking about.

I'm not trying to be Mr Doom and Gloom here, but I can't see how this is anything but a huge setback to the way forward for 5.5E, and I would suggest that not having this option really scales down the potential. But with that said, will WotC offer something up to pivot? Don't know. I hope so because even though I can be a curmudgeon, I'm still on team D&D.