I believe it. Anyone making it a long term profession needs to be really good and also really aggressive about their pricing, otherwise it just wouldn't be a livable income.
I am fluent in important strategic and business languages. Any translator job offer I have recieved has always tried to pay people around $25 per hour but calculated by the second with all downtime excluded.
If I worked in IT, my downtime could be spent learning new skills and getting paid to do it. Working as a translator and you have a take home pay of about $4 per hour as your downtime is not compensated, like a waiter without tips.
I am sure there are better translation gigs out there -- but the entire field has "avoid like the plague" written all over it.
I am working on a product with a new company I formed.
The economics are interesting. I pay, upfront, all capital required to get the product ready for viewing.
Hackers and exploiters can probably destroy the experience for players because an indie studio is going to struggle to have any proactive anticheat.
Lag, poor networking, and poor performance can also kill the experience fir players and result in a negative review.
Delivering a game that covers the bases here well enough to not be turned into a meme or review bombed is a scarey endeavor.
Who knows, maybe the market looks and decides the game just isn't cool enough?
I hope for success on my project. I wont be doing any microtransactions initially because I am too focused on the other considerations.