Top Multiplayer Sessions to Attend at Gamescom 2026
There is a limited amount of multiplayer or backend-centric sessions this year at DevCom, but still, we'll make sure to attend them when we can. In no particular order, our schedule will be:
Anti-Cheat at Embark Studios
Embark has shipped two multiplayer titles; THE FINALS and ARC Raiders. This session pulls back the curtain on what anti-cheat actually looks like in practice at an indie studio. Tom van Dijck covers the struggles, the wins, and where the cheat detection arms race is heading. The core message is one more studios need to hear: anti-cheat isn't optional, and failing to take it seriously at launch can be nearly impossible to recover from.
With Tom van Dijck (Embark Studios)
BUILD, BUY, CO-DEV OR AI — 30 Years of Backend Evolution Through a Veteran's Eyes
A note upfront: this session is led by Phil Rogers, Head of Technology at The Multiplayer Group, a co-development and outsourcing vendor; so the perspective comes with that context. That said, the substance is worth your time. Rogers traces backend evolution from PS1 dial-up through cloud-native architectures to GenAI, and digs into Spec Driven Development as a framework for keeping core IP in-house while leaning on external resources and AI. If you're a producer or backend engineer weighing build vs. buy decisions right now, this is a useful lens.
With Phil Rogers (The Multiplayer Group)
Evolving EVE Online — Bold Innovation in a Volatile Industry
CCP Games has been running EVE Online as a live service for over two decades, which makes Snorri Arnason's perspective here genuinely rare. The session tackles how to make a credible business case for bold product changes without destabilizing a live game; navigating the tension between creative ambition, design constraints, and commercial reality. Relevant to anyone in live ops or product leadership wondering how to push a game forward without blowing it up.
With Snorri Arnason (CCP Games)
Reinforcement Learning-Powered Steering for World of Tanks: HEAT
This one goes deep on a specific technical problem: replacing traditional raycast-based pathfinding with a full reinforcement learning pipeline in a live vehicular combat multiplayer game. Wargaming's AI team walks through the entire journey; reward crafting, building a training environment that mirrors production, sensor design, and getting it into the engine. A rare end-to-end production case study for RL in games, from people who actually shipped it.
With Aleksey Tishurov and Dmitri Kulik (Wargaming)
And for those not attending… see you in Cologne!
Written by
Gabriel Parent, Director at Edgegap
