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

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.

 

[Clint_L]

The closest counterpart seems to be Talespire, and while it doesn't seem to be in any danger of going under, it's also not the dominant VTT.

If WotC's goal was to swoop in and gobble up a big part of the VTT market, going after Fantasy Grounds or Roll20 makes more sense. At the moment, with Maps, they seem to be straddling those and a simpler VTT like Owlbear Rodeo, although I suspect they will work on making Maps more robust (with optional microtransactions) over time.

WotC did swoop in and gobble up a big part of the VTT market. With Maps as a feature on DDB they likely have a much larger user base than all other VTTs combined. Why would they be interested in Roll20?

 

[mamba]

One could hope but, well, earlier this year... Project Sigil - 90% Of D&D’s Project Sigil Team Laid Off

very few skills will transfer over to Maps. If your job was to make 3d assets for Unreal Engine, Maps is not what you will work on next.

 

[Cergorach]

I don't really find the repeated reference to another application that I have never heard of to be persuasive, sorry.

I'm guessing that this isn't the first thing you've encountered something that you've never heard of, that doesn't mean it doesn't work, it isn't good, or it isn't popular amongst a certain crowd. It's been mentioned on this forum before...

As for 3D VTTs, Darjr did a poll almost 3 years ago, 14% wanted one, 30% could be convinced. That's not just amongst VTT users, that's amongst all users that deemed to respond to the poll. That is far higher then I would ever have expected! D&D General - Do you want a 3D vtt?

As a side note, you replied to the same thread, TaleSpire was mentioned in that same thread before you responded, and even in a response to your comments. You either don't read entire threads before responding OR you read it and forgot... We're all getting old...

You were very clear that you aren't the target audience, and have very little interest in it.

But let me be clear, I own TaleSpire, have tried to run Sigil (on a Mac via Crossover), but I don't run my VTT in 3D. So I have an interest in 3D VTT, but will probably not run it. Partly due to hardware requirements for everyone involved, but more important, the perception between pnp RPG and computer RPG of my players.

And I think that a good 3D VTT would gain more and more acceptance when it's easy to use, runs on a LOT, isn't that heavy on the hardware, isn't significantly more expensive then current 2D VTT, and people get more used to it. ~25 years ago VTTs were the black sheep of the pnp RPG family, a pain to use, limited hardware, expensive, perception of it was bad (pnp RPG vs computer RPG), etc. With better technology, better developers that can do more, more easily, acceptance, necessity, RPGs becoming more mainstream, etc. that resulted in the current situation for 2D VTTs. I see no reason why that can't happen eventually for 3D VTTs...

Getting back to WotC, the made Magic: Arena, which is imho a very good implementation of MtG, with a pretty decent earning model and f2p model. I've never went into the MtG physical card game scene (hated it due to Ante), but it's still a fun game to play. How many incarnations to MtG did WotC make before they finally hit the jackpot with Magic: Arena? 15 times!

The difference between small developers and large multionals like WotC/Hasbro is that when the first fails in a project, it stops existing. When the later fails in a project, it just closes down that project and moves on to the next. And WotC/Hasbro doesn't just do that with software, they also do that with D&D products. How many D&D products have TSR/WotC produced that don't have a followup/equivalent in the last decade in D&D 5e? How many board games did Hasbro make that are still around? Trial and error. The issue with WotC/Hasbro is that they have a LOT of error and don't seem to be learning from them, not by not doing something similar in the future, but by firing the people that learned from the errors.

 

[tetrasodium]

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.

There already were vtts supporting hybrid play with a touch surface and physical minis with much lower hardware needs though, I've been doing it for years.

Ultimately I think that the root of the issue is that someone at Hasbro/wotc wanted to use the ogl rewrite to bar off what they thought was anew area of next gen vtt functionality but didn't expect to get blocked at oglor to find out that existing vtts already supported the new feature set they wanted to wow people with. Once that one two punch came through the executive who put their thumb on the scales of priorities lost interest or got overridden so sigil had no path forward and a bunch of development in largely unwanted 3d/"hybrid play" features the market had already long supported