This post is from the WWDC26 Games Technologies Q&A.
Hi!
Question
Could you provide some reassurance on the continued support for SpriteKit in the coming years?
Trigger
The deprecation of SceneKit at WWDC 2025 made me nervous.
Context
I use SpriteKit because:
- It can render any video AVFoundation can handle, which third-party engines don't do for several reasons including patents. This allows me to prototype UI that controls video with a game-like feel.
- It can render text and emojis through AttributedString, and text is hard.
- Thanks to a clear and well-exposed update loop, it can be integrated with libraries such as Core Image or Box2D. Example with Box2D here.
- It can draw dynamic shapes and paths with SKShapeNode, and visualize and respond to all the processing done at specific times during a frame.
- SKView is very handy to generate textures from nodes, and SKRenderer can be used to render a SpriteKit scene to video or sequence of images. This is possible thanks to multiple frameworks working together, including AVAssetWriter and IOSurface. Example of SpriteKit offline rendering here.
Apple Alternatives
When Apple announced the deprecation of SceneKit, I learned RealityKit in order to move my SpriteKit-based projects to RealityKit.
RealityKit is interesting, but for 2D and 2.5D workflows I found several areas where SpriteKit remains significantly more practical:
- I had to lock physics to the XY plane, which could stress the engine and introduce unwanted overlap.
- Overlapping entities on a 2D plane was hard: ModelSortGroup did not provide the simple flexibility that SpriteKit zPosition provides.
- AFAIK there is no dynamic path/shape drawing in RealityKit. So drawing lines, visualizing physics and joints, rendering graph connections in the scene is not as easy as it is with SpriteKit shape nodes.
- SpriteKit is lighter and less power-hungry.
Let me know if you need any more context or detail. Thank you!
