Rimworld

I know that I'm pushing a bit too far in the opposite direction, but that's because basically no one is trying to counter this endless trend of "hardcore is cool and edgy"

Obviously not all players are like that.

The problem is that the norm now is to assume that a game needs to be hard, and that anything less is "too easy".

Recent example that comes to mind, Songs of Syx (you probably know it already, if not you can look it up, it's not a bad game). The game has unlocks in an achievement-like way, which help make the game a bit easier; logical one would say, it's along the lines of rogue-like unlocks, you can play and lose while still progressing, amazing. But the game itself can be pretty hard, and while there are difficulty settings, changing any to be easier prevents unlocking anything (but harder difficulties don't, which clearly gives the vibe of "you are too bad at the game to deserve the achievements"). There's no good reason to do that, the developer is far from being incompetent, but yet there is the idea that you cannot enjoy the full game if you don't want it as hard.

It's not about the core of the game being hard, nothing actually would change badly if the achievements were never locked from a difficulty setting, but here it is. And you are put with the background thought that you're not really playing the game properly if you reduce the difficulty (even though the achievements themselves do that, but the " hard" way so it's ok I guess)