D&D General 'Project Sigil' 3D Virtual Tabletop Finally Laid To Rest

Platform will remain active until October 2026.
Project-Sigil-Spell-in-Action.webp

After 'sunsetting' the active development of Dungeons & Dragons' ambitious 3D virtual tabletop back in March, when 90%--about 30 people--of the team was laid off, Wizards of the Coast has confirmed that development on Project Sigil is ending permanently.

In a message on D&D Beyond, WotC thanked users for their support. Those who have used a Master Tier subscription in the last 6 months will gain a 6-month credit. Sigil will still be available to use until the end of October 2026.

We have made the difficult decision to end development on Sigil. This was not a decision made lightly, and it followed months of reflection with all teams involved. We’re deeply grateful to everyone who explored Sigil with us and shared in its journey. Your passion and feedback meant the world.

At Wizards of the Coast, our goal is to create experiences that help you tell incredible stories together, whether at the table, online, or anywhere you gather to play.

When we introduced Sigil, we imagined a powerful 3D virtual tabletop where you could share maps, minis, and environments with your friends and fellow players. While that vision inspired thousands of players and creators, we couldn't sustain the level of ongoing development support that Sigil—or our community—deserved. That’s on us. What we’ve learned from Sigil, and from your feedback, will guide how we approach future digital tools. We’ll take the time to do it right in pursuit of developing the best D&D experiences possible.

To everyone who built and played in Sigil—developers, DMs, players, and creators alike—thank you. Your time, creativity, and feedback made Sigil what it was. We know this decision hurts, especially for everyone who built campaigns, shared feedback, and believed in Sigil’s future. You deserve clarity about what happens next.
 

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Yeah. Sigil was a bit of a head scratcher. I think most people prefer their VTT experience to leave room for the imagination versus it being a video game experience. Give me a good map with tokens and dynamic lighting any day over what Sigil was trying to do.
 

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We knew this was all coming based off of the previous announcement and the mass layoff of the Sigil dev team... it totally sucks and the rumors of alleged internal competition and fighting between the Maps and Sigil team are horrible

But...

The actual announcement of it ending instead of letting it slowly die with no communication was well done. Plus the compensation to the users of Sigil as well as to all DNDBeyond users themselves is very well done. I believe most companies in this situation would not have done that and fumbled the messaging on top of all of that...

Has WotC learned how to PR well?

This, coupled with the Dragonlance non-announcement/teaser from yesterday makes me feel like Dan Ayoub might be behind all of this?

Maybe I'm getting too hopeful here and I am a hardcore D&D fanboy... I might be reading too much into this...
 

To me, Sigil needed to come out and hit an almost impossible mark right out of the gate when they first started showing it. It would've had to really dazzle people with a must-have VTT that worked on multiple different devices, and the entire project was probably on the scale of a AAA video game taking years to make. Just too much of a commitment of time and money for Hasbro/WotC.
 

On the other hand, there's a lot to be said of the business side realizing that Maps was covering the need, and stopping work on the stuff nobody really wanted.

I agree that it's a good think they didn't fall for the sunk cost fallacy. On the other hand in an ideal world different teams, or more likely some manager who didn't really understand the market but got all excited because they read an article somewhere, talking to each other and making a rational decision on what's best for the company before hiring a bunch of developers and then laying them off would have been nice.

Unfortunately while our characters may live in a fantasy world, sadly we do not.
 

On the other hand in an ideal world different teams, or more likely some manager who didn't really understand the market but got all excited because they read an article somewhere, talking to each other and making a rational decision on what's best for the company before hiring a bunch of developers and then laying them off would have been nice.

That's based on an assumption that the costs and value were knowable before the project began, which is not generally true.
 

To me, Sigil needed to come out and hit an almost impossible mark right out of the gate when they first started showing it. It would've had to really dazzle people with a must-have VTT that worked on multiple different devices, and the entire project was probably on the scale of a AAA video game taking years to make. Just too much of a commitment of time and money for Hasbro/WotC.

Likely too much of a commitment for the target market. It sounded cool, if they could have done what they were talking about but whoever greenlit it underestimated the level of effort required (something I've seen time and again) and overestimated the potential market.
 

Yeah. Sigil was a bit of a head scratcher. I think most people prefer their VTT experience to leave room for the imagination versus it being a video game experience. Give me a good map with tokens and dynamic lighting any day over what Sigil was trying to do.
Yeah, I think there are communities that love their minis and have decent gaming PCs and stuff like Talespire is there for them (and actually it runs on my M1 laptop, too), but it seems be kind of niche. There's also the issue that Sigil seemed really obsessed with doing virtual sales of minis, which can be hard to stomach.

That being said, I wish I had time to figure out how to use Talespire well and to export some Heroforge minis into it just for yuks.
 


Yeah. Sigil was a bit of a head scratcher. I think most people prefer their VTT experience to leave room for the imagination versus it being a video game experience. Give me a good map with tokens and dynamic lighting any day over what Sigil was trying to do.
At most quite a few gamers seem to want their VTT to handle all the system bits and math with a click, but not the fully visual experience of a video game. If they'd stuck with that full automation, it probably would have been a winner.
 

At most quite a few gamers seem to want their VTT to handle all the system bits and math with a click, but not the fully visual experience of a video game. If they'd stuck with that full automation, it probably would have been a winner.
I disagree. A great 3d system would be a game changer. It's just so hard. Making it 3d doesn't make it a video game at all. I didn't get this argument at all. Doing all the math makes it more of one.... Though I agree most want that.
 

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