Booth snacks of Gamescom 2026, reviewed

I’ve become convinced that every Gamescom attendee who posts a variant of "Great time, so exhausted!!!" as they leave the Koelnmesse is, in fact, putting on a front. Gamescom is not merely exhausting. Gamescom is a place in which thousands of people, who’ve dedicated their lives to an almost entirely sedentary pursuit, are forced to strap themselves with overstuffed rucksacks before walking distances equivalent to circumnavigating the god-damned Moon just to get from one side of Halle 3.2 to the other side of Halle 4.1. Gamescom is a public health menace, capable of reshaping the spines of its encumbered visitors and even, for those who occupy the business section, forcing them back into an earlier, hunter-gatherer stage of human evolution.

If you’re in the B2B area, see, it’s because you’re there to work, which inevitably means you have no time for anything else. Breakfast? Lunch? These concepts are powerless against the onslaught of preview appointments and developer interviews. Yet if one is to survive, let alone endure Gamescom’s physical trials, fuel is essential. That’s why an increasingly common sight at the world’s biggest games fair is the scavenging journalist, picking at the business section’s (ideally unguarded) selection of snack bowls and plates. The scavenging journalists of RPS are, of course, no exception.