Wizards of the Coast Scraps Sigil VTT & Announces Layoffs
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Just a few weeks after the official launch of the new Dungeons & Dragons virtual tabletop known as Sigil, Wizards of the Coast has terminated most of the staff working on the project and is essentially shelving the much-publicized VTT.
The news was leaked to several major outlets which cover Dungeons & Dragons, along with a number of internal emails that were distributed to Wizards of the Coast team members. It marks a major blow to WotC and the D&D brand, with potential implications for the future of the company. Below, we break out everything we know so far.
What is the Sigil VTT?
Sigil is a virtual tabletop developed by Wizards of the Coast using the Unreal Engine 5. The system – which has been in development for several years – integrates directly with the D&D Beyond platform and allows players to build their own unique miniatures, while accessing a variety of terrain and monsters, all using the official DnD 5e rules set. Notably, Sigil stands out from other VTTs, such as Roll20 and Foundry, due to the fact that it operates entirely in a 3D environment.
The platform was officially released for PC on February 28th, 2025, with little fanfare and over a year of public Beta testing. It’s completely free to D&D Beyond subscribers (although the level of features varies based on your subscription level). Following the release, Sigil has received fairly middling reviews, with many fans and industry pundits pointing out a lack of robust features and somewhat clunky user experience. Many early testers pointed out that while Sigil is a great tool for map building and creative concepting, it’s not particularly useful for actually running a game.
What are the future plans for the Sigil VTT?
Blain Howard, Senior Manager of Brand Publicity and Communications for Dungeons & Dragons, recently shared the following email, which was sent to all Wizards of the Coast employees on March 18th, 2025. The email is attributed to Dan Rawson, Senior Vice President of Dungeons & Dragons and Hasbro Direct.
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 large, 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.
Thank you for your understanding and continued support. If you have questions or concerns, please reach out.
Dan
Final Thoughts
While Sigil will continue to exist on D&D Beyond, Wizards of the Coast’s original ambitious plans for the VTT are a thing of the past. Rather than being a massive, heavily monetized standalone product, it will essentially be a minor feature on D&D Beyond, with minimal future content.
What may be more damaging to the D&D brand, however, is the layoff of 90% of the Sigil team (roughly 30 people in all). It’s not a great look for Wizards of the Coast, with many fans and industry observers still remembering the round of devastating layoffs that occurred back in December 2023.
We’ll be keeping a close eye on this story in the days ahead and will update this page with new information as it’s made available.
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Cameron Nichols is a Senior Editor who lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and has been playing D&D since the early 90s, when he was introduced by his older brother and cut his teeth on AD&D 2nd Edition. Since then he’s played virtually every RPG he could get his nerdy little mitts on (including a weird Goth phase in the early 2000s when he rocked Vampire: The Masquerade pretty hard). His favorite D&D campaign setting is the Forgotten Realms and his favorite character to play was a Half-Orc Barbarian named Grug (who was unfortunately devoured by a gelatinous cube).
