Epic's Tim Sweeney to keynote Devcom

The organisers behind Devcom have announced the first keynote speaker for its conference in Cologne: industry veteran Tim Sweeney.

Sweeney is best known as founder and CEO of Epic Games, the company behind Unreal Engine as well as titles ranging from the original Gears of War trilogy to the upcoming Fortnite.

The exec will speak on the final day of the Devcom developers conference, discussing "augmented reality, virtual reality and the development of the metaverse".

One more business keynote will be announced at a later date, as well as two public keynotes that will be open to Gamescom attendees.

Devcom is a new developers conference that will be held in Cologne's Koelnmesse in the days running up to Gamescom 2017. It fills the void left by UBM's decision not to host GDC Europe this year, which usually precedes the world's biggest games show.

A few more speakers have also been confirmed for Devcom, including Bluehole Studio's creative director Brendan Greene (aka PlayerUnknown), Wooga's lead writer Rebecca Harwick, and Playsnak director PJ Esteves.