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.

 

[Zaukrie]

It's understandable if SmiteWorks needs to charge for access to the D&D PHB on their platform . . . it's also reasonable for customers to be less-than-excited about paying for access to the book again.

I've always wondered how possible it would be for WotC to start a program similar to Movies Anywhere the movie studios use to address this problem. With Movies Anywhere, if you link your accounts, a movie (from a participating studio) that you purchase on Amazon will also show up in your Fandango library, and so on. I wonder if the money would work out allowing something similar for TTRPG digital books . . . if you purchase the D&D PHB on D&D Beyond, it would also unlock on SmiteWorks or vice versa, perhaps for a small "upgrade" fee. That'd be nice, and would certainly encourage me to check out other platforms then the ones I'm already invested in.

Agreed. They should charge me. I already have a platform where I've paid, heck, twice. I'm not sure what it would take to get me to pay a third time. But they should charge me for the effort of getting the rules into their system.

 

[Zaukrie]

The 3D aspect is really challenging there's no denying that. I'd love to see how all of the different VTTs handle it. I know that Foundry has a third-party module for this but when I investigated it, it was far too complicated for casual use. Nice to see what Fantasy Grounds is doing!

It's not that hard to use, imo. But I over built everything, and it took a lot of time.

Also, my players don't want this as much as I do..... So that's one reason we don't actively use it anymore.

 

[SteveC]

Also, my players don't want this as much as I do..... So that's one reason we don't actively use it anymore.

In our group it was the DM who fell in love with 3D. We all go along with what the DM wants so we were looking into it. I think our DM would love to spend hours making maps for it. I know he uses Dungeon Alchemist right now with 2D and those maps look amazing. When I make one? It looks slapped together at best (because it is).

 

[smiteworks]

I played in an in-person 3.5E version game of the D&D Classic Steading of the Hill Giants. The DM built an elaborate full-scale model of the entire steading with hand-carved wall posts. He actually has a video up below.

The funny thing is that we entered the steading back by the kitchen and there were stairs leading down to the 2nd floor immediately available upon entry. He had not built out the downstairs section... so we decided that our characters needed to explore the first floor instead. I still laugh whenever I think about his initial reaction when we found the stairs going down.

 

[Zaukrie]

I played in an in-person 3.5E version game of the D&D Classic Steading of the Hill Giants. The DM built an elaborate full-scale model of the entire steading with hand-carved wall posts. He actually has a video up below.

The funny thing is that we entered the steading back by the kitchen and there were stairs leading down to the 2nd floor immediately available upon entry. He had not built out the downstairs section... so we decided that our characters needed to explore the first floor instead. I still laugh whenever I think about his initial reaction when we found the stairs going down.

It is always an issue with big builds. My players are generally cool with sticking to my build though....I play in person and online.

 

[Dire Bare]

Paizo set up a program that sort of does that. If you own the PDF at Paizo.com, you can sync your account and get a fairly significant discount on the FG version of that same product. It is normally around the price of the PDF, so $15 or $20 off for core books. For adventures, that means you can normally get the FG version for like $6 or $7. We track these purchases differently, so we don't have to pay as much of a royalty to Paizo for those either since they've already gotten paid for selling you the content when you bought the PDF.

Where that gets really cheap is if they run a Humble Bundle on PDFs and then you can benefit from discounts on all the products in the HB.

Well that's pretty awesome! Thanks for working that out with Paizo! Hopefully WotC will see the light and do something similar!

 

[kayakingpoodle]

Agreed. They should charge me. I already have a platform where I've paid, heck, twice. I'm not sure what it would take to get me to pay a third time. But they should charge me for the effort of getting the rules into their system.

This is an interesting issue, the sunk costs on one platform causing potential customers to avoid buying into other potentially better for them platforms. I am definitely in this boat, I'd rather not use a VTT than spend money on the same content I'll still not own on another platform.

Reminds me of cell phone contracts back in the day.

 

[SteveC]

This is an interesting issue, the sunk costs on one platform causing potential customers to avoid buying into other potentially better for them platforms. I am definitely in this boat, I'd rather not use a VTT than spend money on the same content I'll still not own on another platform.

This is such a good point. I've been holding off on buying product until my group decided what platform we're going to go with. We were probably going to use Sigil, which wasn't ideal to me, but I'm in for what the group wants. Now we're wondering about our existing Roll20 setup or switching to Foundry. I know that Fantasy Grounds also has a marketplace, so we could use that. I'm honestly not sure which other VTT platforms have similar marketplaces, but I'd be interested to see them.

I think the point is we'll pick one of them and go with that. The nice thing is we're going to be going with the 2014 rules for at least another year at this point, so we don't have to make a decision.

 

[Lalato]

I like the idea of 2.5D...Just 2D maps with maybe 3D(ish) minis. But I'm guessing the work to make any portion of it 3D(ish) would be a lot of effort so you might as well make everything 3D(ish).

 

[EthanSental]

I played in an in-person 3.5E version game of the D&D Classic Steading of the Hill Giants. The DM built an elaborate full-scale model of the entire steading with hand-carved wall posts. He actually has a video up below.

The funny thing is that we entered the steading back by the kitchen and there were stairs leading down to the 2nd floor immediately available upon entry. He had not built out the downstairs section... so we decided that our characters needed to explore the first floor instead. I still laugh whenever I think about his initial reaction when we found the stairs going down.

Seeing the old metal stone giant at 1:19 of the video made me smile…thanks for sharing Doug and thanks for FG and supporting various RPGs with it!