Report: Hasbro Is Scrapping Dungeons & Dragons’s Ambitious Virtual Tabletop – Gizmodo

Hasbro’s Sigil 3D virtual tabletop tool—which recently launched in a messy, unfinished state as an early public playtest—is reportedly being shuttered after years of development and being folded into, in some capacity, existing D&D Beyond virtual tabletop system, Maps.Rascal News reports that, in an internal message sent to Wizards of the Coast employees, the studio confirmed that Sigil will “transition to a DDB feature,” and attempt to release currently developed extra content for users at no additional cost, while “most of the Sigil team will be separated from the company this week.”“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,” the purported message reads in part. “Although we haven’t fully realized our vision for Sigil to scale, the team should be proud of their achievements.” io9 has reached out to Wizards of the Coast to confirm the veracity of both the message and the layoffs, but had yet to hear a response by time of publication. A LinkedIn post shared last night by Sigil design lead and WOTC game rules specialist Andy Collins already detailed the layoffs, saying that roughly 30 people, including himself—roughly 90% of the current development team, according to Collins—were impacted.Wizards of the Coast first publicly unveiled Project Sigil in the summer of 2024, teasing a gamified VTT system developed in Unreal Engine 5 to allow players and Dungeon Masters to develop customizable, fully 3D maps and environments to share and play in, as well as a host of features and access to high quality D&D character models (notably including Baldur’s Gate 3‘s Astarion and Karlach, attempting to leverage the viral success of Larian’s 2023 smash-hit CRPG). But since its splashy reveal Wizards struggled to publicly demo Sigil, climaxing in last month’s launch of a publicly accessible playtest to subscribers of D&D Beyond‘s Master Tier that was met with criticism that beneath its splashy visuals, the system was rife with bugs and user accessibility issues, and extremely limited compared to the grand vision Wizards had teased for the platform.Further reporting by Rascal alleges that development on Sigil was rocked by a lack of clear vision, and divisions between Hasbro upper management—who had hoped to treat Sigil less as a virtual tabletop platform, and more of a standalone video game that could’ve potentially utilized other IP from across the toymaker—and its developers, as well as an internal rift between Sigil’s developers and the D&D Beyond team as they developed the Maps VTT system, with the latter purportedly denying the former access to internal Beyond data.Now, with a skeleton crew of remaining staff, the Sigil team will reportedly work with the D&D Beyond team to integrate what little of Sigil’s vision remains into its already existent form. We’ll bring you more on Wizards’ plans for Sigil as and when we hear them.Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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Source: https://gizmodo.com/dnd-sigil-vtt-canceled-hasbro-wizards-of-the-coast-2000578128