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.

 

[SteveC]

As for Ember, when I asked about size, they didn't have a good answer. Because it is bigger (or was) than the Forge would let us store (and they didn't have an answer either). That may have all changed......

This is a very good question. I think they'd be shooting themselves in the foot if it was too big to use with hosting services. I am able to self host, but I was considering online storage so players would have access to the game 24/7.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

It might not be a "stand alone game", but it would be cool if they just made a VTT that was part of just using their online software (beyond?). It would have been an incredible value add. I understand they probably want to make money off of it, but still - just making it free to use would have been incredible.

That's the model that Netflix uses. They probably could try to do a games-only subscription, but just adding some great games (and some not great games) to their catalog encourages people to stick with their Netflix subscription so they can keep playing Civilization, Kentucky Road Zero or the Monument Valley series.

 

[Clint_L]

They do not make any money for QOL improvements in DDB. They will fix serious bugs but development will only focus on money makers.

I'm not sure I follow. Making the product offer better value for money is a good way to continue to grow it. Maps has been a game-changer for a lot of folks on DDB, and we just had a thread from someone moving his entire campaign to DDB in order to use Maps.

Here's the thing: 50+ years into D&D, it is still basically about selling books. Yes, it has incredible brand recognition, but WotC, like TSR before them, has continued to struggle make money off anything other than books, and the occasional license (BG 3 was obviously a jackpot for them, but not the kind of thing you can plan around).

So if you're going to be a bookstore, then it's all about maximizing the profit margin. And DDB is fantastic for that, given that it's all digital so WotC can basically keep everything from each of their own books it sells, and a chunk of any 3PP books. I suspect that the revenue stream from subscriptions is of secondary importance to keeping folks tied to the DDB ecosystem, and that's why WotC offers pretty insane value for a Master Tier subscription.

I think Sigil was ultimately intended to offer a second digital revenue stream to DDB, other than books: the sale of digital miniatures and terrain assets. In fact, that's how it was basically introduced back in the "OneD&D announcement" - as a coequal pillar along with the new books and DDB, which was to tie the three together. But clearly their projections have shown that there just isn't the demand to justify the development and maintenance costs. So instead of becoming a new revenue stream, the VTT, as Maps, is folded back into being another feature attached to the Master Tier subscription, with Sigil lingering on for awhile as a kind of vestigial limb.

This is also what the constant arguments about whether or not the 2024 rules are a true new edition miss: WotC is now reliant on DDB, and can't do a new edition like they and TSR used to. They are not going to break DDB by suddenly invalidating most of their bookstore. That's where their money is. So it'll continue to be incremental change because that's what DDB requires.

This is a huge strategic shift from a few years ago. Go back and watch the OneD&D announcement: the vision was clearly explained as the game having three main pillars: Books, the VTT (Sigil), and DDB. Now it's down to just the two pillars. Once again, trying to diversify past mainly being a bookstore has failed.

 

[Incenjucar]

My condolences to the team that put their work into this and to the players and DMs who aren't getting what they hoped for.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This is a huge strategic shift from a few years ago. Go back and watch the OneD&D announcement: the vision was clearly explained as the game having three main pillars: Books, the VTT (Sigil), and DDB. Now it's down to just the two pillars. Once again, trying to diversify past mainly being a bookstore has failed.

They have also been successful (from a monetary standpoint, at least) in licensing the brand out. I can get a D&D shirt at Old Navy, which is crazy, gamble in the check-out line on a D&D branded online gaming site, and then go home to a house full of swag that costs WotC almost nothing other than a staffer or two handling the licensing deals and standards compliance.

Other brands, like Playboy, have made similar shifts as their core product has become less compelling in the 21st century.

Doubling down on licensing seems like the direction they're most likely to go, since it's extremely low overhead coupled with potentially huge returns.

 

[beta-ray]

While I am not completely surprised that the product fizzled, I am surprised that it happened so quickly. I guess it is better to do it now than string it out past being embarassing, it's still a little bit of a shame. Hope the folks who worked on it land on their feet fine.

 

[Clint_L]

They have also been successful (from a monetary standpoint, at least) in licensing the brand out. I can get a D&D shirt at Old Navy, which is crazy, gamble in the check-out line on a D&D branded online gaming site, and then go home to a house full of swag that costs WotC almost nothing other than a staffer or two handling the licensing deals and standards compliance.

Other brands, like Playboy, have made similar shifts as their core product has become less compelling in the 21st century.

Doubling down on licensing seems like the direction they're most likely to go, since it's extremely low overhead coupled with potentially huge returns.

I do think licensing is important to them, but I don't think it's huge. The movie, good as it is, was a bust, and now there's a TV show that I am sure they are hoping does some things, but that's not something they can plan around. Selling t-shirts at Old Navy, branded socks and coffee mugs and so forth is cheap for them, you're right, but doesn't seem to be a massive revenue stream (again, barring a blue moon event like BG3), and from what we've seen they are still largely reliant on books.

This has always been the issue with D&D: you can basically play it for free, or with a few books and some dice at most. And that's still how lots of folks basically play it. DDB is all about making it easy for folks to get attached to a digital ecosystem so you're likely to buy more books that are immediately integrated right into your experience. Maps works really, really well for that strategy, because now if you buy, say Vecna: Eve of Ruin through DDB you immediately get every magic item ready to be added to the digital character sheets, every monster ready to use with the Encounter Builder, and every map ready to go. Plus some extra swag like themed dice and character sheet backgrounds.

So if you're using DDB, Maps makes it so that you can pick up an adventure and start playing. Sigil offered something similar, but less integrated with DDB and a lot more complicated to use. Obviously the vision was to make it as intuitive and integrated as Maps, but that was just not going to happen while also offering the complexity needed to make it it's own revenue stream.

 

[cbwjm]

Didn't something similar happen in 4e? 3e also had character gen tools that I don't recall being further developed than a demo with the player's handbook. Seems that when it comes to tools like this they don't want to follow through.

 

[Incenjucar]

Didn't something similar happen in 4e? 3e also had character gen tools that I don't recall being further developed than a demo with the player's handbook. Seems that when it comes to tools like this they don't want to follow through.

4E had very good character generator tools. Shutting them down remains The Worst.

3E had a CD demo that fizzled out.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

If you don't try to do new things, and possibly have them fail, new things never happen.

DDB has consistently sucked at being anything other than A) a marketplace and B) a character builder that is very unfriendly to house rules. It's a bad product that has remained in an embarassing state for years, and a small amount of development would go a long way.

The campaign section is a joke. Basically 2 single wordpad documents for public and private notes.

Its frustrating to see them fart away all that dev time and money when there are so much low hanging fruit to pluck in making DDB useful.

Case in point... I hand out scrolls a lot. In Foundry you drag a spell from the compendium to a character's inventory and it automatically creates a hyperlinked scroll. Compare that to DDB.