'The_Ace_of_Rogues' is very much suggesting he just knows their contracts were naturally up.
I am a bit confused why he thinks there were contracts (beyond general employment contracts) at all -- from the released letter, it sounds like they were salaried employees, and they were laid off because that's what you can do.
Because WotC doesn't have a consistent output of software like this and so would have no reason to keep a permanent full-time staff of such devs. They dabble from time to time, but it's never been a staple product. Ergo, logically when they do start one of these projects in-house they bring in a team for the duration and then let all or most of them go once it's finished.
Because WotC doesn't have a consistent output of software like this and so would have no reason to keep a permanent full-time staff of such devs. They dabble from time to time, but it's never been a staple product. Ergo, logically when they do start one of these projects in-house they bring in a team for the duration and then let all or most of them go once it's finished.
That doesn't mean they were on term contracts. Hire, then fire, is entirely normal for software. Also, from the leaked letter: "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." That is the type of severance you see for salaried employees, not contractors.
The specifics of any contract between WotC and Mr. Collins are unknown, however his work history is available and can be verified. I am only correcting verifiably false information.
'The_Ace_of_Rogues' is very much suggesting he just knows their contracts were naturally up.
He does not know that.
Maybe people should only talk about what they know. Instead of just making things up so they can massage their own consciences.
Not "naturally" as in "this was the specifically scheduled end date", but in the sense of "okay, building's done, thanks for your work" yeah. However you want to look at it, WotC doesn't produce enough software products to have a permanent in-house development team. Ergo, when they do start one of these projects, they'll put a team together for the duration, and on the off chance they don't spell it out when they're interviewing and hiring, the team would still likely be pretty aware that they're only going to be employed for the duration of the project. I cannot speak to how abruptly the termination came at them from their perspective, but I highly doubt most of the team was expecting to still be onboard by the end of the year- or possibly even June- once Sigil went into public access.
Unless you can point to some other software project of a comparable scale that we know WotC is working on, there's simply no reason to think they'd keep a development team on once the project ended- however that happened. It goes beyond "oh, look at the company pinching pennies" and into "breach of fiduciary duty" for them to keep paying a bunch of people when they have no work for those people to be doing. If Sigil broke down and the where and how if it did are one set of topics, but the laying off of the devs once it did happen is not some evil corpo move, it's just what happens when there's no more work to be done, and it's a reality that was both accounted for in the devs' employment benefits and something that they were likely well aware of already. If you have specific evidence to the contrary I'd love to hear about it, but until then I'm going to stand by the logical inference that a company that only rarely develops software products did not indicate the dev positions on a project to produce one were permanent and the devs hired for that project could read the room from the start and recognize the same thing on their own.
some people got hired to do a job - apparently only 33 or so (if 30 is 90% of team) $20-30million got spent on the project over 3 years - atleast thats what im lead to believe people were unhappy with result - assumption based of public posts and the change in direction people were fired with benefits - severance and all that jazz sigil gets transitioned towards a dndbeyond feature for people to use - unsure what that process actually entails
what more is there to consider on that matter when the end results were fair??
why not focus on sigil....
does sigil work for you??
what do you like about sigil??
what do you dislike about sigil??
what improvements would you of liked to of seen for sigil if continued or revisited at a later date??
Do you feel Sigil is a finished product from your hands on experience with it? Is it as usable as the encounter or map tools?
I do not have a pc capable of running it, nor do I have a master sub even if I did have a a pc capable of running it.
would say about 80-90% finished, most of the bones are there, currently any issues ive stumbled across have been minor, havent checked out the encounter mode or character sheet imports for more then a min or two, so might be some issues hidden in there im yet to experience - time will tell
personally think it just needs some optimisation, fine tuning (mostly aesthetics and/or QoL stuff) and more content added as books get released (which would typically utilize the work already done on the project)
most issues i read about seem to be more to do with the user side of things (greyed out minis, difficulty finding minis, character sheet import doesnt work with certain combos, preference for a different VTT) rather then sigil itself (however i would say i think wotc over paid for what wotc received)
have never used the encounter or map tools so unsure how they compare to it - but i do hear good things about the map tool (not so much about the encounters tool)
EDIT: ooh and one thing i disliked is that there was no option to create a custom goblin or kobold mini (there are some premade minis and tokens though)
Because WotC doesn't have a consistent output of software like this and so would have no reason to keep a permanent full-time staff of such devs. They dabble from time to time, but it's never been a staple product. Ergo, logically when they do start one of these projects in-house they bring in a team for the duration and then let all or most of them go once it's finished.
That doesn't mean they were on term contracts. Hire, then fire, is entirely normal for software. Also, from the leaked letter: "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." That is the type of severance you see for salaried employees, not contractors.
The exact semantics of what terms were used for their position aside, do you honestly think most or all of the team had any expectation that this was a permanent position, or even one that would outlast the finalization of Sigil? They got hired to produce a particular project for a company that does not regularly produce such products. The logical conclusion is that your employment ends when the project does. I'm not saying it can't have ended sooner and more abruptly than they expected, but they had to recognize they were in the final stretch anyways and were probably already planning for the future once they project was done and their employment with WotC ended.
Because WotC doesn't have a consistent output of software like this and so would have no reason to keep a permanent full-time staff of such devs. They dabble from time to time, but it's never been a staple product. Ergo, logically when they do start one of these projects in-house they bring in a team for the duration and then let all or most of them go once it's finished.
We aren't blind. We can all remember well how Wizards were pushing their VTT as being a big deal.
A showcase of it was the big event at their summit.
Only now was it ''never' a big deal because they couldn't deliver what they promised?
The exact semantics of what terms were used for their position aside, do you honestly think most or all of the team had any expectation that this was a permanent position, or even one that would outlast the finalization of Sigil?
They shouldn't have had such expectations, which doesn't mean they didn't. There is nothing particularly unusual about the layoffs, it's pretty much the way the gaming industry works... but the gaming industry is also a generally terrible place to work.
[Redacted]People in a field where they often move from one employer to the next after a project ends receiving severance benefits before doing just that? This isn't the one factory keeping a small town afloat closing down because the work is being outsourced to China, this is people who by any realistic assessment of the circumstances were hired for one project coming to the end of the project. I've never denied it could have come at them sooner than they expected, but I've also yet to see one shred of evidence that they would have had any reason to expect their jobs weren't coming to an end in a period of weeks or months anyways.
[Redacted] a road project is finished and the people who were out there working on that are "out of a job" until the union sets them up with their next gig? Because from everything I can see, it's a pretty similar paradigm here. You get hired to do the work. You do it until the project ends. Then you find another project. This isn't some new and shocking turn of events, it's simply the reality of how some positions work, and while it might not meet the standards of a utopian ideal, it's not some hideously flawed one that leaves all the people working such positions scrabbling for the next crust of bread.
I'm sure what is being described as an industry standard way of handling contracts and projects in the gaming industry is true, I don't know this from any sort of personal experience but it certainly matches up with what I so often see from other software developers.
I think the point however is that Sigil is very clearly nowhere near complete enough to suggest that the project is ready for such a move. It effectively doesn't work at all and does not qualify as a functional VTT for any purpose, far from it. I mean, there is not a single complete feature in the entire game, or even of sufficient quality for their to be any reasonable expectation someone would willingly pay for it. The response from the BETA testers is that they don't want to test this app because its not ready for BETA testing.
There is far more indication that Hasbro/WOTC has completely lost confidence in this very expensive venture ever being successful, now or in the future and are simply cutting their loses.
Whatever the case may be, I don't think we are going to have to wait long to find out the fate of Sigil. Even 3-4 game developers working full time with active servers is overhead and if there is no way to garner any gains in the immediate future from this project, it is unlikely Hasbro or WOTC are going to want to pay the bill for it.
I personally don't think there is much hope for Sigil going forward, it is most likely the latest in vaporware coming out of WotC. They should probably stick to acquisitions like they did with DnDBeyond and simply make someone like the guys over at Talespire an offer.
Sigil had potential. But in my mind it tried to do too much.
If it had just acted as a 3D map maker, connected to your DnD Beyond characters (just like the Maps tool or like using Roll20 with the Beyond20 app), then it would have been great and I would probably have spent hours playing around and building lovely 3D maps for my players.
Instead, you have this weird half-map/half-"game" system where:
You had to import the character first and use some weird little "character sheet" where all the class features and inventory were just tiny little mostly-identical icons, which you couldn't differentiate without hovering your mouse over everything (whose idea was this? what was wrong with just listing the items?)
And then when a player attacked everything hit and applied damage automatically. Which is obviously necessary for a game but not a VTT! It left no way for the DM (me) to apply simply thing like a cover bonus or other adjustments without faffing about. I actually would have been happier if, when a player attacked, it simply showed the dice result and let ME say whether it hit or not and apply the damage (like a basic map tool).
If it had just been....simpler....I think it would, ironically, have been far more practical to actually use.
It’s an interesting article, as the company is working with an in-house digital game development studio, and working with external developers and partners.
At least those let go got a pillow when tossed out on their collective behinds, but it doesn’t make what was done any better. And why couldn’t the people let go not be re-contracted for 12 months to transition Sigil into DDBeyond and clean up some of the unfinished DDBeyond features while giving them time to prepare for contract termination?
250Million a year for digital projects, and Sigil is how old? If 30million was spent in just one year for 33 people and R&D ate half the rest, then ROI of the completion of project means the company gambled on Sigil being a blockbuster hit and it flopped.
Doesn’t make the digital future of Hasbro or WotC look too promising, but time will tell.
And why couldn’t the people let go not be re-contracted for 12 months to transition Sigil into DDBeyond and clean up some of the unfinished DDBeyond features while giving them time to prepare for contract termination?
Well, those are practically two different industries. (Speaking as someone with years of software experience in both "game development" and "web development.") Sure, smart software people who work in one could learn the other, but it's probably easier to find new people, and the two industries don't traditionally pay the same.
And why couldn’t the people let go not be re-contracted for 12 months to transition Sigil into DDBeyond and clean up some of the unfinished DDBeyond features while giving them time to prepare for contract termination?
Well, those are practically two different industries. (Speaking as someone with years of software experience in both "game development" and "web development.") Sure, smart software people who work in one could learn the other, but it's probably easier to find new people, and the two industries don't traditionally pay the same.
If this is anything like video games, this might be standard practice. Gaming industry is notorious for this, more so if it was a successful. This said, I do wonder if the people that needed to be fired were the ones that got sacked.
If this is anything like video games, this might be standard practice. Gaming industry is notorious for this, more so if it was a successful. This said, I do wonder if the people that needed to be fired were the ones that got sacked.
Depends on your definition of 'needed to be fired'. These people were laid off because they were no longer needed, not because of misbehavior. (It would not surprise me to see C suite casualties as well, if I were Chris Cao I would be rather nervous).
Companies are fighting a constant PR battle to look good. Cutting 90% of a staff makes people wonder what is going on. A video game company as cutting 20-30% of staff is already deemed problematic by many people. Made worse if the product succeeds. 90%, even for a failure, makes anyone that might be interested in the product scared that something is wrong from the ground up. More so if we find out the people that remain, most likely leadership positions, get a pay raise out of this.
On a more practice level, with most of the work force cut, this means whoever is left is now running on dangerous levels of caffeine and anxiety to fix any issues. Even if the launch wasn't a disaster, this also means IF they rehire people they are most likely getting new people, so will be spending a significant amount of time getting used to this place's work culture and finding their routine. Also they are learning the shared vison the previous team were working on. Keeping most of the staff help elevate this problem by largely making this not a problem for 70-80% of the company. Looking at video games, its the main reason fans of Devil May Cry 1 were not happy with Devil May Cry 2.
This does not mean this is always a good thing (one of the writers on the first Predator film, the guy with the glasses that gets killed first, was the main one for The Predator) but it does help.\
The other question is, was this in the end necessary? If they are still going through with it, why are they not, you know, keeping this ship well creed. After doing the suggestion of messing around with Sigil for a couple of hours, I think I have an idea what they were going for, figured out how to do some of the things DnD shorts said wasn't there, and have an idea what they were trying to do (replicate an actual table top). Still haven't figured out how to adjust character stats or upload one of my characters off of beyond, but that may be a me problem. This is not, say a them problem. Is this problematic enough to want a subdivision of a company to be sacked, especially if its true higher ups were more of the problem than the boots on the ground?
Companies are fighting a constant PR battle to look good. Cutting 90% of a staff makes people wonder what is going on.
Cutting 90% of all staff would definitely raise eyebrows. Cutting a single studio (0.5% of the total workforce) ranges from meaningless to "a product or project has been canceled". Which is exactly the case: Project Sigil, as it was originally conceived, is no more.
It follows a pattern of abrupt significant changes on this site with no notice to the user base. It doesn't matter how much they hype it, market it, or how well it works wotc will change or abandon things on what appears to users as a whim.
I can't see this as a good thing for longterm growth, good rapport with customers bothe existing and potential.
Decision making solely for profits is a very short term plan that costs a brand far more than it gains them.
The way Sigil has been handled is just another brick in the walls being built to entomb a great IP inside a poorly conceived money printing machine.
It follows a pattern of abrupt significant changes on this site with no notice to the user base. It doesn't matter how much they hype it, market it, or how well it works wotc will change or abandon things on what appears to users as a whim.
Abandoning a project always looks bad, but it would look bad no matter how they structured the layoffs.
It follows a pattern of abrupt significant changes on this site with no notice to the user base. It doesn't matter how much they hype it, market it, or how well it works wotc will change or abandon things on what appears to users as a whim.
I can't see this as a good thing for longterm growth, good rapport with customers bothe existing and potential.
Decision making solely for profits is a very short term plan that costs a brand far more than it gains them.
The way Sigil has been handled is just another brick in the walls being built to entomb a great IP inside a poorly conceived money printing machine.
The far more significant issue at hand here is that Sigil was kind of the last hope for the new edition of the game to be relevant.
Unlike past editions that evolved the game in one way or another, be it successful editions like 1st, 3rd or 5th, or less successful ones like 2nd or 4th, regardless, these editions each made a contribution to the design and the evolution of the game. They triggered debate, they pushed the community to design games based on or sometimes even in direct contention. Whatever these editions were, there was no question that they were relevant and important contributions.
2024 was released at a time when D&D turned 50, a pivotal moment in the history of the franchise, after 10 years of the booming success of 5th edition paved the way to a golden age of D&D. It was time for D&D to take the next big step. Unfortunately, that is not what Wizards of the Coast chose to do. Instead of investing in the next evolution of the tabletop game, they did a reprint. A game that we had already played for a decade (lovingly), but still, the same game. There is nothing to debate, nothing to inspire the next generation of game designers and creators because well it kind of already did that... in 2014 when it was first released.
The great big hope as ill-suited as it might look in hindsight, was that the next big evolution of tabletop gaming was this digital, all-inclusive super-platform that was going to turn out D&D experience into a virtual tabletop game playable from anywhere.. (even our refrigitators, apparently).
But instead.. here we are... no evolution, no revolution, nothing to pin our excitement on, nothing to debate except the assessment of how it all went wrong, when the reality is that Wizards of the Coast should have just done their job... make a great game. They had one job and dropped the ball.
Is 2024 a good game? Sure, its fine, its 5e, we already know its great.. but it's not new and after the letdown that is Sigil, the question now is, what's next? Another 5e version of Keep on the Borderland? We did that already. Its called Into The Borderlands by goodman games... Another Forgotten Realms book? We already have one for 5e, its called The Sword Coast Adventure Guide not to mention the countless books on DM guild..
See, this is the problem, we already have a million and one books between official and unofficial releases for 5e, and we have done just about everything that could be done for 5e over the last ten years. The well has been run dry, it's time for something new, a fresh start with a new game, and we didn't get that.
And that... is the problem with this news about Sigil, it was the last hope for a new frontier for D&D.
Because WotC doesn't have a consistent output of software like this and so would have no reason to keep a permanent full-time staff of such devs. They dabble from time to time, but it's never been a staple product. Ergo, logically when they do start one of these projects in-house they bring in a team for the duration and then let all or most of them go once it's finished.
That doesn't mean they were on term contracts. Hire, then fire, is entirely normal for software. Also, from the leaked letter: "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." That is the type of severance you see for salaried employees, not contractors.
Not "naturally" as in "this was the specifically scheduled end date", but in the sense of "okay, building's done, thanks for your work" yeah. However you want to look at it, WotC doesn't produce enough software products to have a permanent in-house development team. Ergo, when they do start one of these projects, they'll put a team together for the duration, and on the off chance they don't spell it out when they're interviewing and hiring, the team would still likely be pretty aware that they're only going to be employed for the duration of the project. I cannot speak to how abruptly the termination came at them from their perspective, but I highly doubt most of the team was expecting to still be onboard by the end of the year- or possibly even June- once Sigil went into public access.
Unless you can point to some other software project of a comparable scale that we know WotC is working on, there's simply no reason to think they'd keep a development team on once the project ended- however that happened. It goes beyond "oh, look at the company pinching pennies" and into "breach of fiduciary duty" for them to keep paying a bunch of people when they have no work for those people to be doing. If Sigil broke down and the where and how if it did are one set of topics, but the laying off of the devs once it did happen is not some evil corpo move, it's just what happens when there's no more work to be done, and it's a reality that was both accounted for in the devs' employment benefits and something that they were likely well aware of already. If you have specific evidence to the contrary I'd love to hear about it, but until then I'm going to stand by the logical inference that a company that only rarely develops software products did not indicate the dev positions on a project to produce one were permanent and the devs hired for that project could read the room from the start and recognize the same thing on their own.
would say about 80-90% finished, most of the bones are there, currently any issues ive stumbled across have been minor, havent checked out the encounter mode or character sheet imports for more then a min or two, so might be some issues hidden in there im yet to experience - time will tell
personally think it just needs some optimisation, fine tuning (mostly aesthetics and/or QoL stuff) and more content added as books get released (which would typically utilize the work already done on the project)
most issues i read about seem to be more to do with the user side of things (greyed out minis, difficulty finding minis, character sheet import doesnt work with certain combos, preference for a different VTT) rather then sigil itself (however i would say i think wotc over paid for what wotc received)
have never used the encounter or map tools so unsure how they compare to it - but i do hear good things about the map tool (not so much about the encounters tool)
EDIT: ooh and one thing i disliked is that there was no option to create a custom goblin or kobold mini (there are some premade minis and tokens though)
The exact semantics of what terms were used for their position aside, do you honestly think most or all of the team had any expectation that this was a permanent position, or even one that would outlast the finalization of Sigil? They got hired to produce a particular project for a company that does not regularly produce such products. The logical conclusion is that your employment ends when the project does. I'm not saying it can't have ended sooner and more abruptly than they expected, but they had to recognize they were in the final stretch anyways and were probably already planning for the future once they project was done and their employment with WotC ended.
We aren't blind. We can all remember well how Wizards were pushing their VTT as being a big deal.
A showcase of it was the big event at their summit.
Only now was it ''never' a big deal because they couldn't deliver what they promised?
They shouldn't have had such expectations, which doesn't mean they didn't. There is nothing particularly unusual about the layoffs, it's pretty much the way the gaming industry works... but the gaming industry is also a generally terrible place to work.
[Redacted] People in a field where they often move from one employer to the next after a project ends receiving severance benefits before doing just that? This isn't the one factory keeping a small town afloat closing down because the work is being outsourced to China, this is people who by any realistic assessment of the circumstances were hired for one project coming to the end of the project. I've never denied it could have come at them sooner than they expected, but I've also yet to see one shred of evidence that they would have had any reason to expect their jobs weren't coming to an end in a period of weeks or months anyways.
[Redacted] a road project is finished and the people who were out there working on that are "out of a job" until the union sets them up with their next gig? Because from everything I can see, it's a pretty similar paradigm here. You get hired to do the work. You do it until the project ends. Then you find another project. This isn't some new and shocking turn of events, it's simply the reality of how some positions work, and while it might not meet the standards of a utopian ideal, it's not some hideously flawed one that leaves all the people working such positions scrabbling for the next crust of bread.
I'm sure what is being described as an industry standard way of handling contracts and projects in the gaming industry is true, I don't know this from any sort of personal experience but it certainly matches up with what I so often see from other software developers.
I think the point however is that Sigil is very clearly nowhere near complete enough to suggest that the project is ready for such a move. It effectively doesn't work at all and does not qualify as a functional VTT for any purpose, far from it. I mean, there is not a single complete feature in the entire game, or even of sufficient quality for their to be any reasonable expectation someone would willingly pay for it. The response from the BETA testers is that they don't want to test this app because its not ready for BETA testing.
There is far more indication that Hasbro/WOTC has completely lost confidence in this very expensive venture ever being successful, now or in the future and are simply cutting their loses.
Whatever the case may be, I don't think we are going to have to wait long to find out the fate of Sigil. Even 3-4 game developers working full time with active servers is overhead and if there is no way to garner any gains in the immediate future from this project, it is unlikely Hasbro or WOTC are going to want to pay the bill for it.
I personally don't think there is much hope for Sigil going forward, it is most likely the latest in vaporware coming out of WotC. They should probably stick to acquisitions like they did with DnDBeyond and simply make someone like the guys over at Talespire an offer.
Sigil had potential. But in my mind it tried to do too much.
If it had just acted as a 3D map maker, connected to your DnD Beyond characters (just like the Maps tool or like using Roll20 with the Beyond20 app), then it would have been great and I would probably have spent hours playing around and building lovely 3D maps for my players.
Instead, you have this weird half-map/half-"game" system where:
If it had just been....simpler....I think it would, ironically, have been far more practical to actually use.
So, when trying to connect as of the last few days, I get that the server is down for maintenance message.
Quick question, I see it is still there for download on the main site and does anyone know if it is dead for good or ever going live again?
FWIW, it was functional to a degree and I really liked the editor.
Hasbro / Wotc Digital Future
It’s an interesting article, as the company is working with an in-house digital game development studio, and working with external developers and partners.
At least those let go got a pillow when tossed out on their collective behinds, but it doesn’t make what was done any better.
And why couldn’t the people let go not be re-contracted for 12 months to transition Sigil into DDBeyond and clean up some of the unfinished DDBeyond features while giving them time to prepare for contract termination?
250Million a year for digital projects, and Sigil is how old? If 30million was spent in just one year for 33 people and R&D ate half the rest, then ROI of the completion of project means the company gambled on Sigil being a blockbuster hit and it flopped.
Doesn’t make the digital future of Hasbro or WotC look too promising, but time will tell.
Well, those are practically two different industries. (Speaking as someone with years of software experience in both "game development" and "web development.") Sure, smart software people who work in one could learn the other, but it's probably easier to find new people, and the two industries don't traditionally pay the same.
If this is anything like video games, this might be standard practice. Gaming industry is notorious for this, more so if it was a successful. This said, I do wonder if the people that needed to be fired were the ones that got sacked.
Depends on your definition of 'needed to be fired'. These people were laid off because they were no longer needed, not because of misbehavior. (It would not surprise me to see C suite casualties as well, if I were Chris Cao I would be rather nervous).
@Pantagruel666
No longer needed, perhaps, but it looks bad for several reasons.
To on from what ThievesGuildMaster was saying:
Companies are fighting a constant PR battle to look good. Cutting 90% of a staff makes people wonder what is going on. A video game company as cutting 20-30% of staff is already deemed problematic by many people. Made worse if the product succeeds. 90%, even for a failure, makes anyone that might be interested in the product scared that something is wrong from the ground up. More so if we find out the people that remain, most likely leadership positions, get a pay raise out of this.
On a more practice level, with most of the work force cut, this means whoever is left is now running on dangerous levels of caffeine and anxiety to fix any issues. Even if the launch wasn't a disaster, this also means IF they rehire people they are most likely getting new people, so will be spending a significant amount of time getting used to this place's work culture and finding their routine. Also they are learning the shared vison the previous team were working on. Keeping most of the staff help elevate this problem by largely making this not a problem for 70-80% of the company. Looking at video games, its the main reason fans of Devil May Cry 1 were not happy with Devil May Cry 2.
This does not mean this is always a good thing (one of the writers on the first Predator film, the guy with the glasses that gets killed first, was the main one for The Predator) but it does help.\
The other question is, was this in the end necessary? If they are still going through with it, why are they not, you know, keeping this ship well creed. After doing the suggestion of messing around with Sigil for a couple of hours, I think I have an idea what they were going for, figured out how to do some of the things DnD shorts said wasn't there, and have an idea what they were trying to do (replicate an actual table top). Still haven't figured out how to adjust character stats or upload one of my characters off of beyond, but that may be a me problem. This is not, say a them problem. Is this problematic enough to want a subdivision of a company to be sacked, especially if its true higher ups were more of the problem than the boots on the ground?
Cutting 90% of all staff would definitely raise eyebrows. Cutting a single studio (0.5% of the total workforce) ranges from meaningless to "a product or project has been canceled". Which is exactly the case: Project Sigil, as it was originally conceived, is no more.
I see it as bad PR for a different reason.
It follows a pattern of abrupt significant changes on this site with no notice to the user base. It doesn't matter how much they hype it, market it, or how well it works wotc will change or abandon things on what appears to users as a whim.
I can't see this as a good thing for longterm growth, good rapport with customers bothe existing and potential.
Decision making solely for profits is a very short term plan that costs a brand far more than it gains them.
The way Sigil has been handled is just another brick in the walls being built to entomb a great IP inside a poorly conceived money printing machine.
Abandoning a project always looks bad, but it would look bad no matter how they structured the layoffs.
The far more significant issue at hand here is that Sigil was kind of the last hope for the new edition of the game to be relevant.
Unlike past editions that evolved the game in one way or another, be it successful editions like 1st, 3rd or 5th, or less successful ones like 2nd or 4th, regardless, these editions each made a contribution to the design and the evolution of the game. They triggered debate, they pushed the community to design games based on or sometimes even in direct contention. Whatever these editions were, there was no question that they were relevant and important contributions.
2024 was released at a time when D&D turned 50, a pivotal moment in the history of the franchise, after 10 years of the booming success of 5th edition paved the way to a golden age of D&D. It was time for D&D to take the next big step. Unfortunately, that is not what Wizards of the Coast chose to do. Instead of investing in the next evolution of the tabletop game, they did a reprint. A game that we had already played for a decade (lovingly), but still, the same game. There is nothing to debate, nothing to inspire the next generation of game designers and creators because well it kind of already did that... in 2014 when it was first released.
The great big hope as ill-suited as it might look in hindsight, was that the next big evolution of tabletop gaming was this digital, all-inclusive super-platform that was going to turn out D&D experience into a virtual tabletop game playable from anywhere.. (even our refrigitators, apparently).
But instead.. here we are... no evolution, no revolution, nothing to pin our excitement on, nothing to debate except the assessment of how it all went wrong, when the reality is that Wizards of the Coast should have just done their job... make a great game. They had one job and dropped the ball.
Is 2024 a good game? Sure, its fine, its 5e, we already know its great.. but it's not new and after the letdown that is Sigil, the question now is, what's next? Another 5e version of Keep on the Borderland? We did that already. Its called Into The Borderlands by goodman games... Another Forgotten Realms book? We already have one for 5e, its called The Sword Coast Adventure Guide not to mention the countless books on DM guild..
See, this is the problem, we already have a million and one books between official and unofficial releases for 5e, and we have done just about everything that could be done for 5e over the last ten years. The well has been run dry, it's time for something new, a fresh start with a new game, and we didn't get that.
And that... is the problem with this news about Sigil, it was the last hope for a new frontier for D&D.