Wizards of the Coast Is Sunsetting Sigil's Active Development

EN World has received confirmation that Wizards of the Coast is planning to transition Sigil, its just-released VTT, to a D&D Beyond feature with no large future development planned. Earlier this week, Wizards of the Coast laid off approximately 30 staff members tied to the development of Sigil, a new D&D-focused VTT system. Ahead of the layoff, Dan Rawson, senior vice president of Dungeons & Dragons, sent out an internal email confirming that the project was essentially being shuttered. Rascal was the first to report the news and EN World was able to independently confirm the accuracy of their report.

The email can be read below:

Dear Team, I want to share an important update regarding Sigil. After several months of alpha testing, we’ve concluded that our aspirations for Sigil as a larger, standalone game with a distinct monetization path will not be realized. As such, we cannot maintain a large development effort and most of the Sigil team will be separated from the company this week. We are, however, proud of what the Sigil team has developed and want to make sure that fans and players on DDB can use it. To that end, we will transition Sigil to a DDB feature. We will maintain a small team to sustain Sigil and release products already developed at no additional cost to users. To those moving on as a result of this decision, we will provide robust support, including severance packages, 2024 bonus, career placement services, and internal opportunities where possible.

I want to take a moment to praise the entire Sigil team for their incredible work to deliver this product to our community. One of the things I’m most proud of here at D&D is our strong sense of purpose. We aim to honor our current players while ensuring D&D continues to build connections and bring joy to future generations. And that’s what the Sigil team was doing. Although we haven’t fully realized our vision for Sigil to scale, the team should be proud of their achievements.”

A full breakdown of Sigil's tumultous development can be found here. Rascal has several additional details about recent events that led to Sigil's early demise.

 

[tetrasodium]

If Sigil was minimal cost; would you think many would incorporate it into their sessions?

No. That was never the use case that it was designed for . It's use case was to provide features that excite individuals who wouldn't be using it

 

[MonsterEnvy]

It's in beta and clearly not done. It has potential, but it needs more time, and it's a shame that it looks like development will slow.

 

[mamba]

It's in beta and clearly not done. It has potential, but it needs more time, and it's a shame that it looks like development will slow.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

View attachment 400535

I am literally talking and watching comments from the remaining devs. It's not dead yet, though likely to go into a different form.

 

[mamba]

I am literally talking and watching comments from the remaining devs. It's not dead yet, though likely to go into a different form.

‘looks like development will slow’ is much more optimistic than warranted given that they lost 90% of the team. Is there really any question that it will slow to the point of an almost standstill simply due to that?

If you want to hold out hope that it does not get unceremoniously discarded in a year or two, go ahead. I would be surprised if it didn’t

 

[DEFCON 1]

If WotC wanted to follow the lead of most other video game companies out there... they'd keep Sigil's door open on their coding and let the modding community have at the game. Those folks tend to put in tremendous amounts of work for little to no remuneration, making games work even better and adding new stuff than what was originally designed. I would no doubt bet there are coders out there who would spend days and weeks on end working on Sigil to make it perform better, even when they would get no money out of it.

And then what would happen would be the niche audience of players who continue to use Sigil would download the mods, play with the mods, and as the UI and gameplay became better and easier to use, they'd become further advocates for the game and over the next several years the audience could build slowly. Then like four years from now Sigil turns out to actually end up with a fairly strong community of players.

 

[EthanSental]

I like that idea @DEFCON 1, like Neverwinter nights modding community did.

 

[Chaltab]

I like that idea @DEFCON 1, like Neverwinter nights modding community did.

It's long been suspected that the main reason Baldur's Gate 3 didn't have any sort of DM mode like the ones for NWN and Divinity Original Sin 2 is so that didn't happen. But now that Sigil is effectively abandoned as a monetization platform there's no reason not to.

 

[Tofu Titan]

If WotC wanted to follow the lead of most other video game companies out there... they'd keep Sigil's door open on their coding and let the modding community have at the game. Those folks tend to put in tremendous amounts of work for little to no remuneration, making games work even better and adding new stuff than what was originally designed. I would no doubt bet there are coders out there who would spend days and weeks on end working on Sigil to make it perform better, even when they would get no money out of it.

And then what would happen would be the niche audience of players who continue to use Sigil would download the mods, play with the mods, and as the UI and gameplay became better and easier to use, they'd become further advocates for the game and over the next several years the audience could build slowly. Then like four years from now Sigil turns out to actually end up with a fairly strong community of players.

If only the management have the patience and vision to see the value of this path!

There is no doubt that given the right alignment and access to the product; a modding community could be nurtured to grow Sigil into something the user base wants as opposed to what Hasbro wants to monetise in the short term.

Can the project owners be persuaded to look past quarterly earnings targets and see the benefits downstream of attracting and sustaining a passionate and engaged community of modders and consumers of mods?

 

[Tofu Titan]

No, because according to many reviewers, it takes forever to build maps for it. That's a huge deterrent. About 2 minutes just to load the blank grid. No undo button, no ability to resize assets. It's almost as if it wasn't even beta ready yet! /s

Great point. Hard to believe such a professional team would not address the common onboarding challenge of the dreaded blank page to a new user.

Offering basic starter templates or a simple onboarding tutorial would go far in encouraging newcomers to make their first map.