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.

 

[Rabulias]

So I guess the bulk of the 350 developers WotC hired back at the end of 2022 did not go to Sigil and really did go with D&DBeyond. All this time, I thought there was a huge team behind Sigil.

WotC Thread 'Hasbro Bets Big on D&D'

Dec 8, 2022

During today's 'Hasbro Fireside Chat', Hasbro's Chris Cocks, chief executive officer, and Cynthia Williams, president of Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming mentioned D&D, and about betting big on its name. This was in addition to the Magic: The Gathering discussion they held on the same call.

The following are rough notes on what they said.

D&D Beyond

• Leaning heavily on D&D Beyond
• 13 million registered users
• Give them more ways to express their fandom
• Hired 350 people last year
• Low attrition

What’s next for D&D

• Never...

• darjr
• Replies: 1,048
• Forum: *Dungeons & Dragons

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[Staffan]

Thats not what pessimism means. It’s not just a case of working out what could go wrong, it’s assuming it will go wrong.

Nah. It's deciding that it's likely things will go wrong, and figuring out how to prepare for that. No plan survives contact with the enemy, and so on.

 

[TheSword]

Nah. It's deciding that it's likely things will go wrong, and figuring out how to prepare for that. No plan survives contact with the enemy, and so on.

Not gonna argue about shades of negativity. Good luck with that outlook.

 

[Maxperson]

So, while it feels good to knock big companies, and WotC in particular, let us look at this for a moment...

WotC, the company, tried major software efforts before, and failed. This is true.

But, "the company" isn't really a single, static entity, now is it? It is a collection of people. There's been major leadership changes since the last effort, and actual people behind Sigil are not the same as before. This WotC hadn't tried it before.

Also, this wasn't actually "the same thing". They took a different approach, and brought in-house a bunch of development expertise by buying entire game companies for this project, where in prior efforts they outsourced efforts to single vendors.

So, this effort was significantly different.

And, by the way, what many here may be unaware, but last time I saw the statistics, something just over half of all large software development projects fail. The word "fail" there does a lot of heavy lifting, as it includes projects that never release, as well as those which go massively over time, over budget, or only with drastically reduced features.

It is not strange that Sigil never made it to market. Software development is risky.

I mean, it was just a joke.

That's why I included the jokey smiley face.

 

[Reynard]

On the upside, pessimists are never disappointed.

What were we talking about?

 

[KYRON45]

On the upside, pessimists are never disappointed.

What were we talking about?

I think we were discussing what the definition of 4e was.

 

[Reynard]

I think we were discussing what the definition of 4e was.

Oh, I know this one!

 

[FoolishFrost]

<facepalm> Oy.

The gaming industry is in freefall, now.

We’ve had studios closing left and right, thousands upon thousands laid off so often it’s not even being noticed anymore, and people with 20+ years of experience are unable to find work outside a Walmart.

This is not a trend anymore. Way past the bottom and making craters.

I know people unemployed since the beginning to 2024. Artists. Programmers. Game designers.

Heck I’m one of them. What the frack is going on?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Heck I’m one of them. What the frack is going on?

Corporations thinking that pandemic era spending habits were permanent and hiring accordingly or, worse, knowing they weren't and doing the big hiring anyway, knowing that their personal jobs were safe when they had to cut back.

 

[ECMO3]

What about all those people who preorded the 2024 rulebooks so they would get a Gold Dragon mini in Sigil? Are they still going to get it? Will there be any use?