Gaming

I mean, presumably because it'd compromise their vision for the game or some such? Some games use gameplay as part of the storytelling, so nontrivial difficulty swttings would compromise the story being told (for example if the game wants you to experience a gruelling trek through a hostile area). Now that doesn't mean a story mode or similar is bad, but there are reasons to consider for a game dev to consider such settings incompatible with their game. Also in a game with more complex mechanics difficulty would be more complicated than player and enemy stats, and a dev might simply consider implementing satisfactory difficulty settings not a good use of their time.

You don't have to play difficult games. Not everything has to cater to a wide audience. Most of today's re-boots and sequals were from stories that catered to a niche audience only to lose its appeal by going too mainstream..

Difficulty is not simply one aspect of a game that can be adjusted with a slider. Difficulty is the confluence of many different gameplay aspects coming together. Sometimes, those systems allow for easy and discrete adjustment like with the old Doom games where settings can simply vary the enemies that spawn, the damage dealt, or the health and ammo from pickups.

The deliberate decisions and balance that make Dark Souls good also make it difficult, it's not good simply because it is difficult. Take Blighttown for example, one of the most notoriously difficult areas of the game. It's difficult because the architecture is hostile and confusing, and encounters place immense pressure on the player through application of Toxic and confined or deliberately open spaces that allow you to dodge yourself off a cliff. How do you make that "easier"? There really isn't an abundance of enemy placement throughout most of the game, it's very deliberate. Equipment attribute numbers are all low to maintain a tight balance and even things like parry windows are affected by the specific shield you have equipped. Adding in additional difficulty options is a retuning of the entire game, which also retunes the formula. Look, I'm sorry if it sounds snobby but there's just no other way to say that if you start making substitutions to a dish at a restaurant it's not the same dish!

This insistence that all games MUST be for all people is what leads to the bland homogeneity of modern game design. Dark Souls comes from the rich legacy of dungeon crawlers like King's Field before it and those games are notoriously oppressive and difficult, it's why people like myself love them. Everyone attributes poison swamps to Miyazaki but go back to Eternal Ring or Shadow Tower: Abyss in the early 00's before his involvement and you'll find mandatory poison damage areas there as well. It's a staple of the genre. Heck, play Megami Tensei (no, not Shin Megami Tensei, MEGAMI TENSEI from the NES) and there's a whole section of mandatory fire damage that you can't negate until you're already 4/5 of the way through it.

I also find the accessibility angle disingenuous and a little insulting even. All props to devs that add difficulty to their game as a means of accessibility when they are able to or want to, but it should not be necessary. This also diminishes real accessibility options like colorblind modes, reading assistance modes, keybinding modes, etc. I do not appreciate that.

Everyone thinks they're a critic because they don't like a game or certain things about a game and that it would be better if it catered to them, but difficulty is already highly subjective to begin with and insisting that devs find ways to foresee and cater to all possible permutations is untenable.

If you don't like the game: fine. If you want to levy valid criticisms about the game in your opinion: fine. But this insistence that the developers are being foolish for creating a game to their vision and not yours is the actual thing cheapening it as art.

Straight up answer which yes, will sound confrontational, but it is made in a blustery manner to drive home the point: People who want games tuned to what they need in terms of difficulty are the same kind that go to a Vietnamese restaurant and complain that spaghetti or chicken nuggies aren't on the menu. "Why would you deprive a paying customer food they're willing to pay for??"

That's what it comes down to. The game wasn't made for you to unwind. It was made with intentional choices made for other people to play and feel the experience of surmounting challenge.

A lot of hobbies like gardening, sports, chess require effort, why is it necessary for video games to be easy?

Forcing some challenge gets you to engage with more things rather than taking the easy way out. It's like bungee jumping (I'd assume), sometimes a push is necessary to experience something new.

Some of my favourite moments were trying Fire Emblem Ironmans, which initially made me go "this is stupid, I'll regret this, I should reload", only to change to "this is peak"