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.

 

[tetrasodium]

There are three kinds of arguments:
1) Wrong
2) Right
3) Arguments that, due to lack of informatin or poor formation, are not persuasive.

I mean, you yourself then go ahead and fill out his argument with four more examples, and more complete discussion of the market at hand. If that's called for, not a single soul should be surprised if I found the original unpersuasive. Sheesh.



So, the intent there's probably pretty guessable: WotC, with its greater resources, thought it should try to get ahead of the curve. I expect the goal was specifically to make a product that was well beyond what the competitors had at the time, not expecting that the non-market would jump on board immediately, but to take advantage of the very typical phenomenon of having a small number of enthusiastic early adopters who eventually bring the rest of the population around.

I think that we are drifting into talking about slightly different things, I congratulate wotc for switching from sigil to "maps"(or whatever it's called now). Wotc didn't go beyond in most cases, they just targeted a market of lottery winners sporting tables full of high end alienware boxes that didn't exist with a feature set that already existed but wasn't especially useful in actual play to vtt users and tried to wall it off for exclusivity with ogl changes.

Those features (like motion) were not in active use by most vtt users as wotc wanted them because they required absurdly high hardware specs as the table filled with several thousand dollar high end alienware gaming laptop powered demo displayed -OR- they existed for a long period of time like when wotc tried to use the oglto stop vtts from something like a moving magic missile & one of the vtts tweeted q video from a convention with a video the words magic missile literally moving from a pc token to monster with a feature that had been in place for ages wotc was trying to lock down a feature set that already existed and was not useful in the ways wotc wanted to deploy it

That model works surprisingly well, IF your development is fast and good. If it drags, or produces mediocre results, the costs begin to rise, and the project doesn't doesn't get a foothold quickly enough to justify its costs.

The thing I am intimating, that people do not seem to be receiving, is that cancelled projects are not really a bad thing. It is the top level of quality control, and keeps them from sinking even more money into the thing. Every successful software company will have a long list of projects that failed.

Figuring out when to stop, should be lauded, not treated with scorn.

Agreed. Wotc deciding not to go off in an unproductive direction should indeed be lauded, that doesn't mean the decisions leading to the choice of carving out that unproductive path in the first place should also be lauded or treated as beyond question. I say that because I wanted sigil to succeed based on early (power point) details that showed what could have been an interesting and useful addition to the vtt market had it given more attention to the needs of vtt users.

The frustrating death of sigil as a dead end was entirely predictable long before the point of no return but anyone who used vtts and questioned specific uses/obvious omissions of the path got shouted down by people who didn't use vtts and were unlikely to do so. Glheck. One of it's biggest reasonably positive early previews was from a YouTuber known for being very much against the idea of using vtts at all & even that set off (ignored)usability warning flags for vtt users about the direction it was taking

It's almost certain that "top levels" level were told "uhhh....this direction.. really?... You surrrrreeee?" At least once before sigil went from "huh maybe useful" to a solution attempting to force the creation of a legally enforced niche nobody needed

 

[FrogReaver]

This kind of thing bums me out.

It feels like there’s no such thing as institutional memory at WotC.

IMO. Creating more problems than they solve is usually the goal of management. Because it’s hard to justify their jobs in they can’t point to something they improved.

 

[Xeviat]

Im just feeling a little bitter towards all the defenders saying it wasn't being shut down when they initially laid off most of the staff.

It really stinks for the staff who put in tons of work. They were given an impossible task.

 

[Zardnaar]

Im just feeling a little bitter towards all the defenders saying it wasn't being shut down when they initially laid off most of the staff.

It really stinks for the staff who put in tons of work. They were given an impossible task.

Staff or glazers here?

 

[Xeviat]

Staff or glazers here?

Users on the discord. Staff I can understand, they're required to be positive and follow company plans. But plenty of users weren't letting others express their disappointment.

 

[Zardnaar]

Users on the discord. Staff I can understand, they're required to be positive and follow company plans. But plenty of users weren't letting others express their disappointment.7

Ah gotcha. The reverse doomers.

 

[FrogReaver]

I think anyone could see from a mile away that Sigil was most likely doomed from the start. The concept just was never going to be a big winner.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I think people definitely want a VTT, because Maps has been a huge hit. They just don't want a VTT that they need a high end computer to run and that takes significant time and effort to learn and apply. I mean, a few do, and they're a niche that is well served by products like Foundry. But Maps does a much better job of hitting the sweet spot for your typical user. It's so simple.

SIgil was just way, way overdesigned.

I agree.

I was listening to an old podcast of mine about the 2023 Summit an one of my big takeaways was "quit worrying about Sigil". They were back in the phase of demoing the hell out of it but it was pretty clear that the need for high-end GPUs to run it was going to be very prohibitive.

I actually admire WOTC for taking the shot at it. They're one of the few companies who could put resources against something this big and try something different than all the other VTTs (outside of Talespire which is still around!).

I also admire WOTC for sticking to Maps. It would have been easy for an executive to kill one of them – likely Maps – because "why waste resources on two different VTTs and this is our big moonshot!"

But obviously this worked out in the end because Maps got mentioned in Hasbro's quarterly earnings call this week.

"D&D Beyond’s new accessible virtual tabletop has driven weekly traffic up nearly 50% since the September launch."

- Source

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?

I doubt they have a bigger market share than Roll20. Roll20 is huge.

 

[BB Shockwave]

.... and nothing of value was lost.
The most this project can boast about is that it outlived Concorde, but it otherwise ended up pretty similarly as that trainwreck.

 

[Zardnaar]

I think anyone could see from a mile away that Sigil was most likely doomed from the start. The concept just was never going to be a big winner.

Concept? I just assumed it was WotC and digital.