Providing PowerPC builds

[DCaeciliusMetellus]

TL;DR

Factorio could provide a Powerpc (ppc64le) linux builds.

What ?

The Factorio team could provide an unsupported ppc64le linux build of factorio. The platform could be declared as 'officially unsupported', so that no development time would have to wasted on bug reports (Basically, if it doesn't work, it doesn't matter).

Why ?

There has been an recent resurgence in the PowerPC comunity, since IBM's new Power9 chips are easily accessible by the public again. Additionally, it wouldn't need much time (maybe one or two hours, just replace the compiler by the right cross compiler and, if it builds, publish the result).

[Koub]

Unsupported version would give a lower standard feeling to all those who would use that version, and there would be some cringe from people who won't understand why the devs release a version while not supporting it.
Knowing the devs, they would feel compelled to debug because of these reports. All in all, I think it's a not-so-good idea to have an unofficial unsupported build. Either fully support it, either don't do it.

[DCaeciliusMetellus]

A supported port would -of course- be better, but I'm not sure it would make economic sense. That said, having a supported version would have the benefit of exposing latent bugs, that don't rear their ugly head on x86 _yet_.

Basically, the thing is that at the moment, people with these machines just can't play factorio at all, and it's arguably better to have a bad experience than none at all.

[Deadlock989]

it's arguably better to have a bad experience than none at all.

Arguably. I argue that it's not.

For example, I could make myself some shit on toast, knowing that it's a much worse experience than Nutella on toast. Even though I don't have any Nutella, it's still shit on toast and still a terrible experience.

The solution is to go out and buy some actual Nutella if you want to be having any kind of toast.

[BlueTemplar]

What if you don't like Nutella-caused deforestation practices ?

Yes please !
Just as I was starting to worry as to what I was going to do when in a few years my AMD Bulldozer wouldn't cut it any more - with neither Intel & Ryzen-era AMD (backdoored) nor ARM (Chinese) being options - an alternative shows up ! And the firmware seems to be open source too !

[Koub]

What if you don't like Nutella-caused deforestation practices ?

Eat plain bread without topping

I work in IT support in my day job. I can tell you for sure that "we release unsupported stuff because bad experience is better than no experience" is a devastatingly bad practice.
1) The users have issues, because the service is not working as the supported part
2) They therefore keep on requesting for support
3) And they are pissed when they are answered "no support on that"
4) User satisfaction plummets because people are expecting a support they don't get, despite there is no contractual obligation to do so.

Please don't do that.

[quyxkh]

[…]it's arguably better to have a bad experience than none at all.

Sure, if you look only at the good parts for the four people who might run this, but the pain/gain ratio for development work on it, considering everyone affected, is all but literally insane. Work the devs do on the x86 build helps thousands of times more players (~13k peak on Steam on Sunday, and people play local so that's a definite lowball).