https://www.wargamer.com/dnd/layoffs-project-sigil-virtual-tabletop
It's likely that WotC's Sigil is done. They should have bought Talespire if they wanted a full 3D table top. If they wanted a VTT with an existing user base, virtual store and integration with steam, then they should have bought Fantasy Grounds. Foundry VTT or Owlbear Rodeo could have worked as well.
Wotc failing on VTT could not have happened to a more deserving company filled with leftarded assholes. Next, I hope to hear more layoffs and WotC stopping all development. Let 6E die from the retarded spring of race marxism its based on.
Oh, my!!! Say it ain't so, Joe.
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on March 19, 2025, 01:15:09 PMhttps://www.wargamer.com/dnd/layoffs-project-sigil-virtual-tabletop
It's likely that WotC's Sigil is done. They should have bought Talespire if they wanted a full 3D table top. If they wanted a VTT with an existing user base, virtual store and integration with steam, then they should have bought Fantasy Grounds. Foundry VTT or Owlbear Rodeo could have worked as well.
Wotc failing on VTT could not have happened to a more deserving company filled with leftarded assholes. Next, I hope to hear more layoffs and WotC stopping all development. Let 6E die from the retarded spring of race marxism its based on.
Or just hired some chinese mobile devs to build it on spec in less than 12 months. No one is expecting a full AAA game (not that those are any sort of benchmark for quality nowadays though). We basically only needed the equivalent of Neverwinter Nights from 2002 that runs on mobile devices like smart phones and tablets and that integrates with their Beyond database for stats and characters.
Even if this were a viable avenue, WOTC have shown they are incapable of implementing a VTT twice now.
They should just make D&D themed gatcha games if they want to cash in on monetizing some kind of online D&D scheme.
So "Sigil" was the name of their VTT? I knew a VTT was supposedly coming, and I saw hype and demos from it awhile back, but I didn't know it was called Sigil.
WotC could fire all their DEI hires, issue a public apology, and make a $1 million donation to the Heritage Foundation, and I still wouldn't buy any of their products.
Yeah, it's dead. They said 30 people were canned and clarified that's 90% of the staff so that's three, maybe four with generous rounding, staff left. There are online games in maintenance mode with more staff than that.
My bet is whoever is left is there to make sure everything is shut down properly and any rights/licensing matters resolved before turning out the lights and locking the door.
Quote from: Crusader X on March 19, 2025, 01:57:52 PMSo "Sigil" was the name of their VTT? I knew a VTT was supposedly coming, and I saw hype and demos from it awhile back, but I didn't know it was called Sigil.
Sigil is the 3D VTT, they also are making a 2D VTT. IOW's, Hasbro is fucking clownshoes at building anything.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on March 19, 2025, 01:45:41 PMEven if this were a viable avenue, WOTC have shown they are incapable of implementing a VTT twice now.
They should just make D&D themed gatcha games if they want to cash in on monetizing some kind of online D&D scheme.
Funny, but if they made something with the look and play of Genshin Impact, I'd actually be interested in that. Of course, pink haired heads would explode if they made a game with good looking characters.
Quote from: honeydipperdavid on March 19, 2025, 03:31:42 PMQuote from: Crusader X on March 19, 2025, 01:57:52 PMSo "Sigil" was the name of their VTT? I knew a VTT was supposedly coming, and I saw hype and demos from it awhile back, but I didn't know it was called Sigil.
Sigil is the 3D VTT, they also are making a 2D VTT. IOW's, Hasbro is fucking clownshoes at building anything.
I was equally confused, not realizing they had a separate 3D VTT. Having seen the preview of the 2D version (D&DBeyond MAPS), it is so far behind what's already out in the market I would never have taken the wraps off it yet. I wouldn't be surprised to see it get cancelled at some point. Not that I want them to buy and ruin one of the other VTTs in the market, they would be much smarter to do so than build in house with a team that clearly doesn't know how to build something like this.
Quote from: Crusader X on March 19, 2025, 01:57:52 PMSo "Sigil" was the name of their VTT? I knew a VTT was supposedly coming, and I saw hype and demos from it awhile back, but I didn't know it was called Sigil.
Yeah, theres a worc vid up where they call it Sigil, same one where one of the developers is proudly stating that D&D needs to be more "toyetic". Hope that fuckwit was one of the ones fired.
Hasbro probably decided it was cheaper to buy a competitor's project at this point and make it theirs.
Never been a fan of VTTs, so I won't miss this at all. I wonder if the money that would have gone into it will be redirected into making more/better tabletop (real tabletop) D&D products, or if Hasbro will put it into something else.
All they needed to do was make the equivalent of a 3d mobile game that meshed with their Beyond databases for characters and monsters. No one was asking for the next MMO or AAA game.
Oh no......anyway pic
WotC was a johnny come lately with a vtt. In that market, like in a lot of others, you shouldn't enter the game late.
I know they tie to dndbeyond to force it.....but then you just have lost any goodwill that might have been left after the ogl nonsense.
Actually. I can guess why the firings.
Sigil is up and running. Released a week ago? Seems to work and has enough to get going. Some things are locked behind the Mester subscription. But that was a 100% gonna happen thing.
So what happened was they did what MMO companies do. They fired everyone not integral to mainenance and modelling. Maybe keep a writer. But odds are wotc thinks they can do all that with chatGPT and dont need em.
Have not downloaded it yet. But watched someone else bumble through tinkering with their Master access.
Surprisongly it can port in Beyond PCs. But only ones made with fake 5e.
All that makes sense but why hasn't WotC come out with a statement saying Sigil is alive and well and just shipped and the doom and gloom is just click-bait guesswork?
Quote from: Ruprecht on March 21, 2025, 10:58:19 AMAll that makes sense but why hasn't WotC come out with a statement saying Sigil is alive and well and just shipped and the doom and gloom is just click-bait guesswork?
You mean "Why hasn't WotC learned how to communicate with its customers given all of its past failures due to the same?"
Quote from: Ratman_tf on March 19, 2025, 01:45:41 PMEven if this were a viable avenue, WOTC have shown they are incapable of implementing a VTT twice now.
It's pretty amazing that a company this big has had this tough of a time.
Quote from: Shteve on March 21, 2025, 11:38:57 AMQuote from: Ruprecht on March 21, 2025, 10:58:19 AMAll that makes sense but why hasn't WotC come out with a statement saying Sigil is alive and well and just shipped and the doom and gloom is just click-bait guesswork?
You mean "Why hasn't WotC learned how to communicate with its customers given all of its past failures due to the same?"
Very this.
But I did get a notification it was up and running via my unused Beyond account. They probably e-mailed off to all Beyond accounts it was up and running.
Theres probably an announcement on the site too.
But this is wotc afterall and so thats it probably. Practically a stealth release.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sigil (https://www.dndbeyond.com/sigil)
If Collins is right then theres now like a skeleton crew left. Which is in line with how many MMOs treat staff once the groundwork is done.
Quote from: D-ko on March 21, 2025, 12:10:14 PMQuote from: Ratman_tf on March 19, 2025, 01:45:41 PMEven if this were a viable avenue, WOTC have shown they are incapable of implementing a VTT twice now.
It's pretty amazing that a company this big has had this tough of a time.
To be fair the first time was outside their control.
Beyond has been chugging away for several years now. Just lacks the 3d side. But its still a VTT.
Sigil is up and running so who knows what will happen with a skeleton crew.
Oh ho. Looks like this was not a wotc thing. Hasbro ordered it.
QuoteRascal spoke with one of the affected workers (who also asked to remain anonymous), and they confirmed the text of the internal message. They said the Sigil team was notified Monday that all but three team members would be laid off. Wizards of the Coast president John Hight reportedly cried while delivering the news, stating that the company may return to the project one day if enough interest was shown, but that it will currently exist as a perk for Master tier subscribers to D&D Beyond.
The employee told Rascal that the atmosphere surrounding work on Sigil had felt off and increasingly strained since late last year, following a somewhat disastrous tech demo as part of a Gen Con 2024 performance that featured Aabria Iyengar, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Anjali Bhimani, and Baldur's Gate 3 actors Neil Newbon and Samantha Béart. Hasbro president Chris Cocks became involved in the project for the first time soon after and was reportedly not very supportive of continued development. The anonymous employee believes development was likely cancelled internally around December, and the last three months constituted a last-ditch effort to create the best product possible spearheaded by project lead Chris Cao.
[...] Sigil's sudden death was more of a murder, according to the employee. They describe a company-wide lack of coordination during their tenure where they never interacted with the book publishing team and only stumbled into the already existing Maps VTT by accidentally signing up for an internal playtest believing it was Sigil, instead. In fact, the employee claims WotC engineers would constantly clash with D&D Beyond staff over access to the latter's fiercely protected internal data. Sigil's original vision was to eventually move beyond D&D to encompass My Little Pony, Transformers, and the rest of Hasbro's vaunted license portfolio. Over time, the team narrowed the scope to creating a D&D application for PC and mobile devices that integrated D&D Beyond data and usability. The team apparently always felt as though they performed miracles with a limited set of tools, constantly moving goalposts and a distinct lack of interest from Hasbro management — until the end.
Source: https://www.rascal.news/wizards-of-the-coast-shutters-sigil-virtual-tabletop-project-lays-off-30-staff/
QuoteJohn Hight reportedly cried
Shit, at least somebody there still can feel. That actually gives me hope.
You guys remember this?
https://x.com/Wizards_DnD/status/1752830891385086118 (https://x.com/Wizards_DnD/status/1752830891385086118)
At the time I commented that this might signal a lack of faith internally at Hasbro regarding their own VTT project.
Quote from: Ruprecht on March 21, 2025, 10:58:19 AMAll that makes sense but why hasn't WotC come out with a statement saying Sigil is alive and well and just shipped and the doom and gloom is just click-bait guesswork?
D&D Shorts (on Youtube) did a short video review showing how a bunch of things just don't work and that the system requirements are pretty high.
Quote from: BronzeDragon on March 23, 2025, 08:54:21 PMYou guys remember this?
https://x.com/Wizards_DnD/status/1752830891385086118 (https://x.com/Wizards_DnD/status/1752830891385086118)
At the time I commented that this might signal a lack of faith internally at Hasbro regarding their own VTT project.
Or wotc not knowing what wotc is doing... again.
Quote from: Omega on March 24, 2025, 10:23:39 PMQuote from: BronzeDragon on March 23, 2025, 08:54:21 PMYou guys remember this?
https://x.com/Wizards_DnD/status/1752830891385086118 (https://x.com/Wizards_DnD/status/1752830891385086118)
At the time I commented that this might signal a lack of faith internally at Hasbro regarding their own VTT project.
Or wotc not knowing what wotc is doing... again.
I'm thinkin I agree with Professor DM. The project was managed to death.
Quote from: Ratman_tf on March 25, 2025, 12:33:35 AMQuote from: Omega on March 24, 2025, 10:23:39 PMQuote from: BronzeDragon on March 23, 2025, 08:54:21 PMYou guys remember this?
https://x.com/Wizards_DnD/status/1752830891385086118 (https://x.com/Wizards_DnD/status/1752830891385086118)
At the time I commented that this might signal a lack of faith internally at Hasbro regarding their own VTT project.
Or wotc not knowing what wotc is doing... again.
I'm thinkin I agree with Professor DM. The project was managed to death.
If what I've been getting snippets of is even half true then Sigil was not managed enough and wotc tried to half-ass it by merging two groups that might be at odds instead of trying to find a way they could both co-exist. Ir at the very least actually managing them so the Beyond side couldnt sabotage the Sigil side.
Feels like someone had an initial viable plan. But wotc probably fired em and just tried to merge.
It really sounds like there's a massive level of dysfunction at Hasbro/Wizards. Entire teams get hired and fired at whim, lack of communication between teams and a management that doesn't really know what to do with the IP. Let's make movies- no let's sell off that part of the business. Let's do video games- and then no longer do business with the company that gave us an amazing success there. Hey, the future is digital/VTT- whoops, just kidding.
It's also sounding like DnDBeyond is in a sorry state these days as well as Wizards doesn't seem to be capable of keeping it running properly. So even if they bought a VTT that was functional, it doesn't appear that they'd be able to run and manage it properly, long term. Maybe they could squeeze a business model out of buying working products from third parties, slapping the D&D logo on it, and milk it for all it's worth while they drive it into the ground. Rinse and repeat.
Quote from: Dracones on March 28, 2025, 12:19:08 PMIt's also sounding like DnDBeyond is in a sorry state these days as well as Wizards doesn't seem to be capable of keeping it running properly. So even if they bought a VTT that was functional, it doesn't appear that they'd be able to run and manage it properly, long term. Maybe they could squeeze a business model out of buying working products from third parties, slapping the D&D logo on it, and milk it for all it's worth while they drive it into the ground. Rinse and repeat.
For all the guff 4E got for needing a program just to make character-building possible*, the number of 5e players who are entirely reliant on D&DBeyond to manage their characters truly staggers me. If it ever stops working the number of players who wouldn't be able to even function would probably kill half the campaigns at my FLGS.
* for the record, the majority of 4E PCs in games I ran/played in were done without a builder. The builder only made sure you had EVERY option from every splat and article ever released available to you, but just the core book with whatever class you wanted to play always had more than enough options to actually be fully playable.
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 28, 2025, 01:29:18 PMFor all the guff 4E got for needing a program just to make character-building possible*,
the number of 5e players who are entirely reliant on D&DBeyond to manage their characters truly staggers me.
If it ever stops working the number of players who wouldn't be able to even function would probably kill half the campaigns at my FLGS.
1: Think you are mixing 4e with 3e., 4e was dumbed down so much that your choices were really limited.
2: Its more that there are 5e players who just love to make endless characters. Beyond makes it easy to organize em all. I was rather appalled to see a guy with over 25 different characters. WHY?
3: Most would hardly even notice because they have so many alts they cant even remember a tenth of them to actually care.
x: Any character builder is going to perk that creative side in some. I mean I knbow people who went through the Neverwinter PC games multile times just to see how different classes played, or to put to use things they learned to make better characters.
Quote from: Omega on March 28, 2025, 11:59:13 PMQuote from: Chris24601 on March 28, 2025, 01:29:18 PMFor all the guff 4E got for needing a program just to make character-building possible*,
the number of 5e players who are entirely reliant on D&DBeyond to manage their characters truly staggers me.
If it ever stops working the number of players who wouldn't be able to even function would probably kill half the campaigns at my FLGS.
Its more that there are 5e players who just love to make endless characters. Beyond makes it easy to organize em all. I was rather appalled to see a guy with over 25 different characters. WHY?
No. I mean half the players in the 5e campaigns I've been involved with literally do not know how to go from "I want a halfling rogue" into an actual character on a sheet (ie. how to take and assemble the statistics from the race, class, background and equipment sections into a functional PC) and only know how to level up by hitting the level up button in D&DBeyond.
And if D&DBeyond ever went down they wouldn't have enough drive to even learn how. I know this because three years in with some of these players and when we level up mid-session and they have their printed out D&DBeyond sheets they don't even know where in the book to go to determine how many spells their wizard can prepare now that they've gone up a level. They just let the program do all the lifting and used the number it gave them.
And this happens every time there's mid session level up. The same damnable "where do I find [insert basic character function they would know if they actually read the class entry in the book here]?" every time.
They don't learn, they don't want to learn. 5e is more like a face to face MMO than a TTRPG for them and if the functionality of D&DBeyond ever went away it'd be akin to WoW shutting down its servers. They'd not continue D&D (or ttrpgs in general) they'd just go find something else to do.
This shouldn't be surprising. D&D is bloated with players who only turned up to ride the wave of the fad... the fad is now passing and levels are returning to more normal, but the fad-followers don't exit all at once. Inertia carries them until something changes their trajectory (a new fad or something inside what they're doing changes enough it no longer satisfies).
Basically, I am saying that in my area, half the players are still fad-followers. A year ago it was 3/4 of them. Two of the three who fit this description in my Friday game are already tenuous and will probably be gone a year from now.
I'm also not calling it a bad thing. If DDB went down permanently tomorrow I think the D&D player community would be leaner, but healthier. I already have plans once the current campaign wraps to give the current GM a break and run an adjacent system (Mutants & Masterminds... I'll be building their starter characters for them) to begin breaking whoever is left out of their 5e ghetto.
Quote from: Chris24601 on March 29, 2025, 07:58:27 AMNo. I mean half the players in the 5e campaigns I've been involved with literally do not know how to go from "I want a halfling rogue" into an actual character on a sheet (ie. how to take and assemble the statistics from the race, class, background and equipment sections into a functional PC) and only know how to level up by hitting the level up button in D&DBeyond.
And if D&DBeyond ever went down they wouldn't have enough drive to even learn how. I know this because three years in with some of these players and when we level up mid-session and they have their printed out D&DBeyond sheets they don't even know where in the book to go to determine how many spells their wizard can prepare now that they've gone up a level. They just let the program do all the lifting and used the number it gave them.
And this happens every time there's mid session level up. The same damnable "where do I find [insert basic character function they would know if they actually read the class entry in the book here]?" every time.
Hate to say it... but that has been a thing since probably D&D's start.
I thiuk we are seeing it more now because "modern" players seem to be stupider. They have trouble with basic math. Some are borderline illiterate. And theres this push to put all the workload on the DM.
Storygamers are the worst of this. Made all the more pathetic when they then turn around and bitch about "teh evul DM!"
That could in part explain why more rules light games have exploded in popularity over the past couple years (and I'm not referring to full on narrative games necessarily but even including traditional OSR in that). My own tastes have shifted dramatically over the decades towards more rules light despite previously loving crunch like tracking every +1 bonus in D&D3.x or doing build point character creation in Shadowrun so gaming illiteracy isn't an issue for me at least for now.
Quote from: RNGm on March 30, 2025, 09:32:04 AMThat could in part explain why more rules light games have exploded in popularity over the past couple years (and I'm not referring to full on narrative games necessarily but even including traditional OSR in that). My own tastes have shifted dramatically over the decades towards more rules light despite previously loving crunch like tracking every +1 bonus in D&D3.x or doing build point character creation in Shadowrun so gaming illiteracy isn't an issue for me at least for now.
My tastes shifted in two different directions for two different parts of the game.
For play its tracked lighter over the years, but for character building it's tracked towards very crunchy.
Basically, a lot of detail in how you get the numbers and special bits onto the sheet, but using those numbers and special bits is pretty intuitive and flexible.
As an example, Mutants & Masterminds is very crunch focused on building characters, but at the table it's mostly just d20 checks to interpret the effects of powers and other widgets that means you're rarely needing to look anything up (if you have your character sheet put together properly that is).
WoTC's failure truly is complete. They sacrificed goodwill to chase VTT gold,now they have nothing.
Quote from: S'mon on Today at 05:43:28 AMWoTC's failure truly is complete. They sacrificed goodwill to chase VTT gold,now they have nothing.
D&D Beyond put out maps, a normal VTT which is what the player base at D&D Beyond have been using.