Only WotC could be given a cash cow and try to milk it from the tail.  You could have had an integrated system where you charger for variant mini and table skins.  You could have increase digital purchases to embed into the environment, you could have added micro transactions on spell visuals letting players make cool and wonderful visuals, etc.  You could have made it D&D more accessible to a new and largely less technical, generation. The benefits that could have been realised where phenomenal.

Whoever made the decisions leading to this point really needs dropping from your board and replaced with someone who can translate a vision and actually run a project.

Why can't the servers be opened for fan use? Why does this project have to lie in a WotC graveyard, when talented people could still work on it as a passion project for their games?? This is a company owned by Hasbro, a juggernaut in the world's capital space. They can keep a couple servers running in the background and still make bank from everything else they put out. C'mon WotC, don't let another opportunity to support fan creativity and wants crumble for no good reason.

WotC/Hasbro decided to kill yet another Golden Goose, because shareholders and greedy execs demand goose flesh NOW, rather than reap the golden eggs for many years to come.  How simple would it have been to implement a VTT that sit on top of all the D&D Beyond content? How simple would it have been for Hasbro to hire a couple key people from other organizations who have developed VTTs, and just put it out there for free to all those with a master subscription, and then drive massive revenue through content and asset additions?  As clunky and buggy as it is, I will stick with Foundry as I have for 4 years running now, but all WotC had to do to completely convert me, is to build something simliar. This is yet another reason why a focus on a handful of shareholders versus millions of stakeholders is always a poor strategy to build a winning company, however, I will admit it makes the few people at the top extremely wealthy at a cost of thousands of lost jobs and countless unhappy customers.  

It's sad that it's going away but, realistically, if it was making more money than it was costing they'd keep it. They're closing it down because it's losing money and no one was using it. I bet almost everyone here upset about it going away isn't actually using the app. They're sad something they haven't looked at is going away. The idea of a cool 3D VTT that is ridiculously impractical...

While the idea was neat, there's just too many problems with this kind of VTT for it to work.

You need the entire gaming group to be online and on Windows with no iOS users. Everyone needs decent desktop computers that can handle the 3D program while also running a voice chat and possibly cameras. And it just slows down play as people trigger spell SFX and deal with more complicated UI. Plus the DM needs to spend three or four times as long doing game set-up as they slowly position the 3D elements and lighting, trying to get the pieces to click together. Or dealing with tracking zones and spell effects, like a sphere of Darkness or Spirit Guardians. And there's the requirement of minis. You pretty much need to launch with the entire Monster Manual or there's no real point. The start-up costs for making this products are high and the return on investment is low.

Very often when actually using a VTT you'd have the unplanned encounter. The random encounter or the players following some throw away line like it was a real clue. And suddenly you need an unexpected map. That's easy with most VTTs as you can just draw some lines into the blank space or quickly Google a map and throw it in. Harder when you want to build all the terrain.

Well, I tried to use it a few times but it was clunky for me. With that said, we all knew the Sigil VTT was in trouble for months, right? I mean, it was pretty obvious that it didn't get the release WOTC was expecting it to get. It was gorgeous, it worked albeit slowly for me< and it did what it was advertised to do. I would like to thank everyone who worked on this project for the time and effort they put into it- You did some great work.

As far as I'm aware, the majority of people I've played with use their VTT in person, like on a TV with minis or tokens. Even the few I know who game on R20 and the like still play more face to face and use the digital platforms to generate their maps. I guess your mileage may vary.

So many are confusing the maps VTT and Sigil. 

Note on update - offering "digital dice" is a dismal replacement for the gold dragon mini.it would have made better business sense to work with the team behind BG3 and go from there for a 3d VTT. If that's your move you owe the supporters more than just paltry digital dice which is already included with subscription. 

They were trying to net the BG3 buzz. 

Sad. It could have been so much, ruined by corporate greed.

Ugh, again small creators sell to big corporations that just ruin things. Remember when DnDbeyond was a small team sponsoring Critical role? Ah the olden times. 

Sigil has great potential if boiled down to just a mini maker, dms and players could both use it to design minis then pose them for photos and export to STL files. The frameworks is all there, the vtt side of it could just be scraped, I can’t imagine it would take more then two guys to continue upkeep on that and mini bundles could be sold for a reasonable $5-$10 a pop and be profitable. Historically nobody has listened to my brilliant ideas though.

I’ve never understood where the “micro cash grab” thing came from. First it itself is/was free, then a lot of the stuff on the marketplace for sigil is/was free. It comes pretty barebones stock yes but I’d say if we are comparing something like any map making assets, it’s one of the most affordable and generous options and you have to option to color minis however you want. A casual glance at any place for map assets shows that there’s little to no free options worth anything, but sigil has given away most of their assets for free. There’s so many I’d advise you actually go get them and take some photos of minis you may want while you can. 

Since i am not sure you (or your bosses more likely) have learned the right things from this, let me give you some pointers.

1. Make sure the most people in your market can use it. Unreal-5 was not a choice that supported that ideal.

2. Make sure to have answers to the most likely questions. When these were asked in the discords, and at the creators summit, those answers were not provided.

3. Be clear people about how the product works, what it is, and is not capable of, or your goals for those capabilities. When asked repeatedly " Can it do X, or is that not part of the plan" i never got answers, and i stopped caring, so if those answers never got to me.

4. This is the most important. STOP THROWING AWAY THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE THE PRODUCT WORK.
You don't get to shoot yourself in the foot then be confused why there are holes in your boots.

Cubicle 7 does this for their WFRP, WH40K lines on Foundry VTT. Why WOTC is still not offering this is beyond explanation.

As soon as Sigil opened i switched over to using to for my table because it:

Let me build custom dungeons quickly and with ease

Let me creat combats by just adding creatures to the map

Automatically tracked so much of the combat stuff to include: player order, monster hp, to hit chance and damage.

Had a great fog of war system. 

Normally as a DM I have to use 3-4 other applications to accomplish all of this. And it was superb getting to do literally all of it from one place.

I was very disappointed when it came out that project sigil was dead on arrival. And I hope beyind hope that they continue to improve on the Maps VTT until its performing at the same level and filling the same niche. 

Please just make the regular maps feature more awesome.  Give us the ability to upload stickers and you're golden.

:hug:

Focus on maps, update the encounter builder with 2024 rules and make it so we can import our encounters, from the builder into maps. These simple changes will make the site far more useful. A more useful site is a profitable site.

Quote from Caleb_Wyviern >>

Why can't the servers be opened for fan use? Why does this project have to lie in a WotC graveyard, when talented people could still work on it as a passion project for their games?? This is a company owned by Hasbro, a juggernaut in the world's capital space. They can keep a couple servers running in the background and still make bank from everything else they put out. C'mon WotC, don't let another opportunity to support fan creativity and wants crumble for no good reason.

 Compute doesn't grow on trees, nor does storage.  Someone's got to pay for it, and the base minimum costs are likely far above the small group of satisfied users.  You'd be more likely having them make it open source, and that's never going to happen either.

Quote from MasterGreen >>

So....no more mal system tied directly into d&d beyond? 

 

 

That was the main reason I kept my master tier.

 

First you take away the ability to purchase individual items...now this....why am I spending money on this service again????

 You got a free 6-mont sub, that’s better than nothing!

Absolutely sad and makes me never want to trust hasbro/Wotc again. Sigil was the one chance you had to make the monitazation of your memberships have broad appeal. Sigil could’ve been the one and only tabletop system for DnD players if you cared about making a great system first and filling it with content to run everyone’s favorite adventures. You could’ve had premade maps of classics ready to go with Sigil just to get people through and learn the system if you even launched Lost mines with it all premade the amount of money that could’ve been made of it is insane, but no you went in half cocked and didn’t care about the development team and the future of the platform itself. Huge wasted opportunity by both the company and for the fans.