I get to say "I told you so" again, which I love. WotC's VTT D&D project fires 90% of its workers, as the project flounders. Will WotC also keep falling into the money-hole of the failed new edition?

Dammit... now where will I get my official D&D orc digital poncho and sombrero from!?!?

I just don't have much interest in the new edition or their VTT.  The new edition doesn't seem to do anything much that I can't do with the one I already have.  By all accounts, it's less compatible with the material I already own than initially claimed.  It doesn't seem to add anything but extra hassle.  Even if the VTT was up and running, it would need to be substantially better than Roll20 in functionality for me to have any interest in it.  It would need to be good enough to get me to abandon the money I have spent getting resources in Roll20 and start over.  I doubt it will be that good even if it ever actually gets up and running.  In short, I don't need this. 

I think this is probably WotC thinking they can get away with moving VTT development to AI. Cutting a department by 90% is almost exactly the kind of thing I would expect to see if they were about to insist all their developers use AI-enhanced workflows. Especially when you consider that VTT developers are probably way more technical than other WotC employees and probably more expensive on payroll as a result.

The problem is that if I'm right, WotC is now positioning itself to be up to its eyeballs in technical debt. AI is really good at creating technical debt, which means that their VTT could get up and running with AI support, and then a quarter later might be impossible to maintain.

Watch them lose money, again and again.

They took a dump on their most loyal long-term customers.  Now they can't figure out why the trans-furry masses, aren't buying more product.

It's a big downward spiral, that's spinning fast.

When I first heard about this from Diversity & Dragons and Tenkar, I thought: "This is 4e all over again!" As it turns out, the situation is even worse.

It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion...

Keep in mind that they laid off a bunch of Beyond staff too a few years ago.

It would be interesting to see what proportion of the fired staff was "diversity hires" and what were not.

As for your question of is 30 people on a project alot?

From what small experience have had. Depends on the project. And depends on what all those people were actually doing. Were they alot of "idea people"? Coders? Modellers? How close was the project to completion?

Timeline is a big issue. 5 people with 5 years to work can get alot done. 5 people with 1 year to work are going to get alot less done. Basic math that alot of companies seem incapable of doing. But then that was the case in the CGG biz too. Lost track of morons who wanted 200 painting level pieces of art from somneone done in months.

I've seen several companies pare down the staff massively once they had the core codebase and foundations laid. Usually this means that any new development slows to a crawl. But you only need a model a month or every few months to keep the players satisfied.

Sometimes this shoots them in the foot.

I'm all for shitting on WotC, but let's think this through.

Hypothetically, let's say WotC turned the ship around. What would that look like? Does anyone here think it wouldn't involve mass firings?

Quote from: Corolinth on March 20, 2025, 12:30:43 PMI'm all for shitting on WotC, but let's think this through.

Hypothetically, let's say WotC turned the ship around. What would that look like? Does anyone here think it wouldn't involve mass firings?

I think it would but it would also mean firing a different group of people.  All the cookbook-come-adventure designers should have gone first if they were actually going to save WOTC.

At this point only one of WotC's VTTs is doomed - the 3D VTT Sigil. The 2D D&D Beyond MAPS VTT (still in beta) is still alive, though their recent demo of where it's at was sad. The demonstration really tried to put a heavy layer of lipstick on that pig. It has a long way to go to compete against the platforms that have been around for years. I won't touch it with a 10' pole.

it must really hurt to be a diversity hire and then get fired when the political tides sway

Quote from: D-ko on March 20, 2025, 01:52:22 PMit must really hurt to be a diversity hire and then get fired when the political tides sway

Do you have any evidence that is what is occurring?

Quote from: HappyDaze on March 20, 2025, 02:16:12 PMDo you have any evidence that is what is occurring?

There's no direct evidence that this has happened here- unlike in some of the other cases where some of the firees were debatably or obviously affirmative action or political hires.  While people are focused on one guy who has been with WotC for over a decade, this was a software team spun up for a purpose, and even should this VTT have been wildly successful it would have downsized after its completion (in a normal software house, some fraction of these coders would have been reassigned to other projects and there would have been only a couple downsized, and the team would have been shrunken, not by 90%, but likely by more than 25%).  But Hasbro isn't really a software company and doesn't seem to have the capability that like, Microsoft or Activision would as regards continuing employment for engineers.

As such, most of these people were hired specifically to code this project, with the internal assumption that many would hang on after launch, to continue supporting it, adding features, etc.  You wouldn't think these would be DEI hires, right?

But, lets remember, this is Hasbro.  They've been chasing the DEI cheese since the word went out that this was more important than profits.  Its entirely possible that this team was hired to fill out a checklist of skin reflectivity rather than actually be good at coding.  Corporate America went buck-wild hiring people based on being non-white after 2020's anti-white summer, so given that fact, plus how this company's political goals influence their actions, it's an entirely plausible hypothesis. 

But sadly we can't know for sure.  It's a good speculation though, a nice dream to have, even without evidence.

Either way it's good to see any of this crap fail.

Regardless of the employees, everything I saw of Sigil was mediocre at best.  The 3D terrain was okay-ish but building out rooms and halls were clunky, the miniature customization was pretty nice, but the rules implementation was weak and barebones at best.  It was not remotely as featured as other VTTs like Foundry when it came to tracking a combat, which was a critical failing.

All of that could've been resolved with more development time.  But without an insider eye there's no telling just what that would've cost.  If these were 30 bumbling DEIs who'd been working for a decade to reach this point then yeah, they weren't going to get this into a finished state anytime soon.  But if it was a competent team I think Sigil could've been in a good state within six months to a year, at which point canning them all was a dumb move.