Today, on Wednesday March 19th, 2025, we pay our respects to Project Sigil. While as of time of publishing, there has been no official announcement, the signs are bleak. We would rather give our farewells while it still has a little life in it.
As we did with Astral tabletop, we will now offer a eulogy to Project Sigil, a spark that burned out before it could reach its potential.
Project Sigil: A short-lived life
While rumours had long been circulating that Wizards of the Coast was developing a digital virtual tabletop platform (VTT), commonly known as OneD&D, Project Sigil was officially unveiled at Gencon 2024. It was a 3D VTT prophesied to be the ultimate platform for the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons. A tool intended to bring all D&D players, and through the terms of service, bind them.
The Alpha version launched in September 2024. It released in February 2025 with a limited feature set. The release was met with a lukewarm reception, with many users complaining of bugs and usability problems. This is something that most software deals with, and these are typically ironed out through the alpha and beta process. In extreme cases, such as Cyberpunk 2077 or No Mans Sky, developers can power through and release a product that meets its original promise.
This is not what lay in store for Project Sigil. Instead, it was barely given room to breathe before it was put on life support. Allegedly, it is now being maintained by a skeleton crew before its final send-off.
This quick turnaround from announcement, to release, to cancellation, naturally begs the question. What went wrong?
We will try to explain.
A VTT without a home
From its inception, Project Sigil has held a curious place in the tabletop landscape. Its niche was incredibly small. Several decisions, both early in development and later in its release cycle held it back.
We’ll cover a selection of them here.
1. Chasing Baldur’s Gate 3
First of all, the target audience. The official announcement in the D&D Direct on August 19, 2024, explicitly calls out Baldur’s Gate 3 players as the intended userbase for the VTT.
Clearly WotC thought they could capitalise on Larian’s monumental success. It seems though, that they attributed the success more towards ‘3D D&D’, and not ‘Incredible storytelling and implementation of game mechanics’. A simple mistake, but one that Wizards tends to make over and over again. We saw this as well with the attempted OGL changes at the start of 2024. The pattern suggests WotC thinks that third party products are successful solely because of D&D, and not that D&D is hugely successful due to the large range of supporting third party products.
The crossover between Baldur’s Gate 3 players and D&D players is likely much lower than one would expect. By attempting to convert these players who had not played a tabletop roleplaying game in the past, they had ignored the millions of folks who already play D&D. It was clear that this product wasn’t for them.
But for those that it was…
2. A high-spec engine
This single decision to chase the Baldur’s Gate 3 crowd led to a number of follow-on decisions. The first of these is the requirement for high-fidelity 3D graphics.
In order to actually use this though, users would need a reasonably powerful computer. Let’s have a look at the recommended specs:
This is a solid mid-range PC these days. For those who don’t have one already, this requires an up-front purchase of, conservatively, $1500. Compare this to the recommended specs for a long-running 3D VTT, Talespire.
Had the platform been given time to develop, rounds of optimisation could have brought these requirements down somewhat. Even with these though, there would still be a minimum requirement that is a significant investment for those that already play D&D.
Some reading may point out – DnD Beyond has millions of users. Surely a lot of these would be interested in Project Sigil.
Wizards of the Coast certainly thought so, tying Project Sigil’s subscription to a DnD Beyond account. However, a majority of these users play on mobile, tablet, or Chromebook. None of these devices would be capable of running Project Sigil.
Now, if a D&D Beyond user did have a powerful enough computer, they would run into the next problem.
3. 3D Map Building
Building your own maps is a difficult thing, even with tools designed to make it fun and easy. 3D map builders are a different beast entirely. Compared to 2D mapping, which uses a top-down camera, users now need to handle a free-moving perspective camera. The third dimension also adds difficulties in placing content. Having to correctly align objects in 3D space can be a fiddly and time-consuming task, especially when needing to consider different camera angles.
This is why tools such as Dungeon Alchemist have become wildly popular. By including procedural generation, platforms can generate 3D maps quickly from a set of simple parameters. Users can then adjust the maps afterwards to fit their game.
Another issue with 3D map creators is the difficulty of using custom and third party content. There is 50 years of RPG content available, almost exclusively 2D, not to mention hundreds of creators putting out maps on Patreon. All of this content can not be used effectively in a 3D VTT.
In the rare occasions that 3D mapping tools allow for 3D model imports, users need to both create a 3D model and manage UV mapping and texturing. This is a much more complicated task.
And, with a much lower amount of custom content, homebrewing becomes more difficult. Most users who would be building maps would be creating their own custom ones. With only a set number of assets available, the number of different kinds of maps that can users can create is limited.
In all, it’s a choice that raises the barrier of entry to content creation, while lowering the number of content themes available.
4. Subscription Model
Due to design decisions in the way Project Sigil was developed, a subscription would be necessary to keep the platform running. Unlike other locally installed VTTs that are self-hosted, Project Sigil made heavy use of cloud infrastructure. From our analysis of the platform, even maps seem to not be saved locally. Rather, they would be downloaded from the cloud each time you wanted to access them.
In our current climate, this is a rookie mistake. More and more, VTTs are turning away from the subscription model. Consumers are tired of monthly payments, especially as practically every service in their lives are trying to extract as much money from them as possible.
The post-2016 generation of tabletop platforms are largely subscription-free. Platforms such as FoundryVTT have exploded onto the market with a one-time-purchase model. These are much friendlier to consumers, and they don’t risk losing access to their content if life throws unexpected hardship their way.
Admittedly, D&D Beyond already features a large subscription userbase, which, if the previously mentioned problems didn’t exist, would seek to work in their favour. Unfortunately their target market for Project Sigil overlaps very little with their existing D&D Beyond userbase.
5. The Project Sigil Gen Con demo
During Gen Con, Wizards of the Coast ran a stage game with Project Sigil to show off its capabilities. You can watch the game below:
The cast performed fantastically, putting on an entertaining performance. But the intended star of the show, Project Sigil, came off looking second best. The game came to a stop multiple times as the cast figured out how the software worked. Plus, showing an entire group of players sitting around a table staring at their screens does not evoke the joy and social engagement that tabletop provides.
The demo failed to show off the best parts of the platform, while highlighting how it can negatively impact both the game and the atmosphere.
(P.S. If you are looking to bring digital tools to your table, try out a tool that’s built for it specifically.)
6. Lack of Marketing
A surprising number of people were not aware the Project Sigil existed. Outside of the D&D Directs, there has been little to no marketing about its release. Here are a couple of comments from /r/dnd
This was not a small indie release. This was supposed to be a flagship product release by the largest company in tabletop gaming. A company as large as WotC has the budget and experience to promote Project Sigil. Such a failure of marketing can only be a deliberate act, or spectacular incompetence.
All of these points worked together to create a lacklustre launch. With all these issues, it is no surprise that Project Sigil failed to find its place in the market. At this point, WotC had two options before it.
- Stick with Project Sigil in the long term. Continue building on the project until it is a compelling offer for D&D players.
- Cut their losses and scrap the project, laying off most the development and gently smother the project until it stops breathing.
Guess which one they chose…
Project Sigil developers laid off
(You can read the original post here.)
Lay-offs in the games industry are common. Especially after the release of a new product. Firing 90% of a development team before a project is feature-complete however, never bodes well.
Industry sources state that there are anywhere from 3-5 developers remaining on the project at most. This number tracks with the 90% figure given in Andy’s post. With a project the size of Project Sigil, this is practically a guarantee that the project is being wound down. The remaining developers will be maintaining the service until it is finally let go. This could occur in a matter of days, or weeks.
We feel for the development team, and hope they find gainful employment. Lay-offs are happening all over the tech industry at the moment, and finding work in a similar area will be difficult.
Many commenters find Project Sigil’s demise hardly surprising, albeit possibly sooner than expected. This is because in life, there are three things of which you can be certain; death, taxes, and Wizards of the Coast failing to create a digital D&D platform.
The most notorious example is their attempt at a D&D4e VTT. Billed as an online subscription-based character management and virtual tabletop tool, it was announced alongside D&D4e at Gen Con 2007. This service did eventually launch with some of the promised character creation, but never reached its full potential. Before that was Master Tools / e-Tools for third edition. These are but a couple of notable entries in WotC’s extremely checkered past of digital products.
Alternate platforms to Project Sigil
For those new to the VTT scene who were excited for Project Sigil, never fear. There are many other VTTs out there that you can use to enhance your gaming experience, depending on how you play and your technical proficiency.
If you’re playing in-person, Arkenforge is the way to go. Built specifically to use while sitting around a table, and your players won’t need to use any screens.
If a 3D VTT is what you’re after, then grab a copy of Talespire. It is a highly competent 3D mapping and playing tool, and was even featured on Dimension 20!
If you’re playing online and have some solid technical know-how, then FoundryVTT is the platform for you. With a single purchase and an incredibly active modding community, it will do just about anything you want it to.
If you still want the single purchase, but want less technical hassle, then give Fantasy Grounds Unity a go. It’s been around for over 20 years at this point, and has thousands of modules ready to download and use.
If you want to run games in a browser, Roll20 and Owlbear Rodeo are both excellent options, however both require subscriptions to get full feature access.
And with that, we conclude the service. Refreshments will be available in the reception, and we will see you in 5 years to commemorate WotC’s next digital toolset.