Difficulty vs Accessibility: A responsibility for the developers, not for the players.

[Shiken]

I agree, no one is entitled to an easy mode. If the difficulty results in less sales, that is the developer's choice. Devs should remain able to design games in their vision, and everything from level design, enemy placement, AI, and combat progression is a part of that. If many of these games were made with an easy mode, it would have to be offline only and people would complain about that. If they had easy servers, it would divide the fanbase and result in grieving from good players trolling those servers. Not to mention extra cost to satisfy a vocal minority of gamers that refuse to learn the game or simply just not buy it.

Many claim that, "it would do nothing for those who like the harder modes."

This is false for a very simple reason. All the combat and level design would now have to fit in a way that can be dumbed down. They could make them drastically different, but at that point they are wasting time and resources on something that is not their vision. Make them too drastically different, and you may as well have two separate games taking place in the same world. Many games that have difficulty options are designed in a way where making enemies hit harder or lighter is enough to justify the option in a quick and painless way. Souls like games would need more than that, and would need to be addressed at a design level to remedy, which should never be done.

So my stance remains the same it has always been. Learn the game and enjoy it, or just don't buy it. With the internet it is not hard to tell if a game is supposed to be hard or not, so the excuse that they "wasted their money" does not fit well either. In most cases, people know what they are getting into, but buy the game anyway. People don't get refunds for a game that is less enjoyable because it is too easy, so it shouldn't work the other way around. Research what you are buying, just like you would anything else.