Why is it with these types of games people complain about inaccessible like imagine a puzzle game and someone complaining its not accessible so they have to change it? Like this just means it isn't for you lol just move on.
Making something accessible just ends up watering down the experience.
And i like this games challenge, now do i get frustrated at times? yes, but eventually i persevere. Simple as that

Deal with it.

It’s difficult, but it’s a satisfying type of difficulty that makes the journey feel meaningful and the challenge fair.

The game doesn't need "the wider audience." Elden Ring sold incredibly. "The wider audience" is not the audience this game was aimed at anyway. People will fall off for sure, but that doesn't mean anything. I love plenty of games I never finished. I know I am not alone in that. This is the game team cherry wanted to make. They made it. It shows in the quality.

by Wider Audience they mean journalists.

Eh people often become fans of certain games even though they have never played said games. Hollow Knight has reached a wide audience already, it has an audience that has and probably never will play it. Its like Harry Potter or LoTR, you have people that haven't and most likely never will read the books but absolutely love the movies. Accessibility is not an issue when you're given options on how to consume media. Can't read a book? Audiobook, or you watch the visual adaptation. Can't play a game? You watch a YouTuber.

It currently has 50k players on steam alone and broke stores
they don't need more people that badly

not everything has to be for everyone, and that's ok

I do find it a bit odd that they've priced it so low, presumably to make it accessible to as many people as possible, while also making it inaccessible to lots of people because of how hard it is.

Personally I don't mind the difficulty and can handle it, although I wouldn't complain if it was a little bit less challenging.

how bloody wide does an audience need to be? didnt they smash steam records? dumb article

Here we go with this again…

Part of the reason I didn't play that much of the first game so I didn't even bother with this new one knowing the difficulty would be even more prevalent in the game. I have no beef about that knowing I have so many games to play & there are other Metroidvania games that are more easier to play. Some people enjoy games for their difficulty & that's fine I just don't have the patience for it unless it's a FromSoftware game.

Git...

I must say, I found Hollow Knight to be perhaps too hard at times (bloody Watcher Knights!!!!) but the sense of achievement I got from pushing through and after about an hour and a half of trying, beating the Hollow Knight, was just about worth it.

I am very much a physical media guy so will be waiting for Silk Song, if it is tweaked by the devs along the way then that's fine by me, I don't think Silk Song will ever be turned into any 'easy' game, so it's seems a little unnecessary to get bent out of shape.

The developers are testing a patch to reduce the difficulty of some early bosses and fix other bugs. If enough people have issues with certain aspects of the game, the game will be balanced.