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.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

I'm not sure what you mean by this. There's no mechanics to run anything remotely close to these in 5E. It's not a system I would consider to run anything like this.


I mean to an extent, this is true, but as someone who made a pretty minimalist Dark Sun patch for 5E, I can say it's not that difficult to do.

It's not difficult, and actually 5E is easier to modify than previous editions, but plainly WotC doesn't want to nor do they think they should.

It's vanilla D&D, all the way down.

 

[Clint_L]

You sure about that?

I'm a Gen-Xer and it's funny how my generation's perception of itself has shifted over time. We were the slacker generation, the generation that didn't engage or care. We were the generation of Clerks and Nevermind.

Now that we're old, apparently we're the generation of hard work and good social skills?

 

[Superchunk77]

WotC + D&D + software? It was doomed from the start. They've never had a successful software product.

 

[Azzy]

I'm a Gen-Xer and it's funny how my generation's perception of itself has shifted over time. We were the slacker generation, the generation that didn't engage or care. We were the generation of Clerks and Nevermind.

Now that we're old, apparently we're the generation of hard work and good social skills?

Apparently, we as a generation have reached the point in getting old that we've (baselessly) lionized ourselves and are now all "kids these days". It's sad and embarrassing.

 

[cbwjm]

Now that we're old, apparently we're the generation of hard work and good social skills?

I wonder if those are mainly the GenX at the older end of the scale. The younger half trends closer to millennials, I think I'm in that bracket where they've added in the term xennial to cover the crossover.

In regard to work and social skills. I make sure to get tasks done for work, always have, and I have poor social skills that are probably more to do with being a bit introverted rather than a somewhat arbitrary cutoff for a generation. All in all, I think it's best to ignore any broad generalisations about each generation, like all the opinion pieces about how millennials have destroyed an industry.

 

[TiQuinn]

I'm a Gen-Xer and it's funny how my generation's perception of itself has shifted over time. We were the slacker generation, the generation that didn't engage or care. We were the generation of Clerks and Nevermind.

Now that we're old, apparently we're the generation of hard work and good social skills?

Totally unrelated to here but I keep feeling like people want to draw Gen Xers into generational fights and forget we are the slackers, and most of us really don’t care.

 

[Clint_L]

Totally unrelated to here but I keep feeling like people want to draw Gen Xers into generational fights and forget we are the slackers, and most of us really don’t care.

Agreed - I always think it's hilarious when Gen-Xers get all self righteous about our superior values or work ethic or whatever. Now you're just another old person complaining about the youth, a story as old as time.

We're basically just like our grandparents were. But with more tattoos.

 

[Lalato]

This comment over on the D&DBeyond forums is spot on...

https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/bugs-support/207285-sigil-on-os-x?comment=39

 

[Dire Bare]

This comment over on the D&DBeyond forums is spot on...

https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/bugs-support/207285-sigil-on-os-x?comment=39

Thanks for the link, that was an interesting read.

The poster's tone grated on me a bit, but overall, I like a lot of his points and suggestions for WotC. And I learned about AboveVTT!

 

[Chaltab]

This comment over on the D&DBeyond forums is spot on...

https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/bugs-support/207285-sigil-on-os-x?comment=39

Combining D&D Beyond and DMs Guild is a bad idea for so many reasons.