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.

 

[dave2008]

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.

I was unfamiliar with Talespire so I checked it out. Not really for me, but it is clear WotC should have just purchased that product and integrated it with Beyond. It would have saved time and money. Still not sure it is something people want though.

 

[SteveC]

I was unfamiliar with Talespire so I checked it out. Not really for me, but it is clear WotC should have just purchased that product and integrated it with Beyond. It would have saved time and money. Still not sure it is something people want though.

I have Talespire (Steam sales are a killer for my wallet), and I think the point is that it replicates what WotC was trying to do from a look and feel standpoint, and is a lot more flexible than what we've seen (which you would expect, since it's been available for some time). If you're not looking for a 3D VTT, it's not going to impress, but that was the direction they were going in.

 

[Zaukrie]

I'll admit I'm not sure I get the overall philosophy of Sigil.

It is separate from DnDBeyond, which never made sense. Sure, you can import stuff, but why not just use DnDBeyond as the backend from the beginning (like Maps) and go from there?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'll admit I'm not sure I get the overall philosophy of Sigil.

It is separate from DnDBeyond, which never made sense. Sure, you can import stuff, but why not just use DnDBeyond as the backend from the beginning (like Maps) and go from there?

It definitely feels like there are warring camps among Hasbro managers and no one forcing them all to cut the crap and work together as a team. Or, worse yet, their manager is a big fan of Team of Rivals, which has poisoned the brains of many a senior manager.

 

[Weirdok]

Perhaps it will become a community effort, like a video game modding tool.

 

[Zaukrie]

cross posting from the other thread:

Here is what one Dev just posted on Discord:

As mentioned before, Sigil is not shutting down. I just now have more work to do. Hopefully with less meetings I can actually get more work done

 

[pukunui]

Hail Mary pass to see if people wanted it, and it didn't work out?

I never really played with either, but I heard more people talking about Beyond's Maps feature, which has to be more efficient to produce.

Maps is fantastic and just keeps getting better!

 

[AlViking]

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.

Maps works just fine for what I would want. I understand that with Sigil they were attempting to get a portion of high end cool-visuals crowd and it's unfortunate that they couldn't make it work. Sadly many projects that have great potential end up in the trash heap for many reasons. One quote I found after a quick search says that 70% of all projects fail. I suspect that number is a bit inflated by an overly-strict definition of success because it was from a company trying to sell management development software but the number is still high. It's not in any way unique to Wizards to have a project cancelled.

Beyond that I agree with @Reynard on this one.

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

 

[Staffan]

Perhaps they felt that with Sigil, they were just going in circles.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Perhaps they felt that with Sigil, they were just going in circles.