Project Sigil 90% Of D&D’s Project Sigil Team Laid Off

D&D's 3D virtuial tabletop.
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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.
 

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<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?
Same thing that's going on in the film industry. I'm a 20 year marketing veteran for feature films who lost his job last summer and is now pivoting into nursing as a new career after I sent out 400 resumes and landed only a single interview for a job way below my level of expertise, that I didn't land.

In a nutshell, the fracturing of the mass audience has reached a level where almost no AAA content can make it's money back, and both industries are in the middle of a major correction in how they operate to account for that. I'm not sure Hollywood CAN change quickly enough (Sony may have the best shot), and will likely end up no longer being the world leader in Theatrical/TV entertainment when the dust settles.
 

Exactly. You assume it will go wrong, figure out how it's going to go wrong, and then - if possible - move to prevent that going-wrong before it happens.

With respect, while that's what we would want to see happen, in practice pessimism typically extends to feeing that prevention efforts are a waste of time, such that pessimists are not particularly motivated to engage in such.
 

Seems like a weird time to fire 90% of your staff just weeks after launch but I'm not really sure how the video game/programing industry works.
It is normal in IT industry - if a project failed. Which is quite common, software is hard, but its most definitely an indicator for a project failure. The 3 people left are just to keep it running for a while but I wouldn't be surprised if they plug it completely in a few months.
 


June of last year, as I recall:


So they hired an industry veteran then fired him nine months later? Bizarre.
 



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