I'm sorry, but I think you're living in a fantasy land if you think translators/hackers fall from the sky and work on a game because they were counting the number of people playing it. That might fly for commercial games, but not doujin. For example Fushigi no Gensokyo seems to have a rather large fanbase, and people have tried to translate it (Before the fanbase was as large), but given the technical difficulties, that project was scrapped unfortunately.
Besides, if I was a translator, rather than caring about how many people are playing the game, I'd be more interested in those who are not playing it but WOULD if I translated it anyway.