1) Who are you to tell people that they have time? I have a few hours each day - not enough time to practice any game exessively, and I know that I am not alone here. Also for an indie dev every lost customer is one too many and you won't lose any customer by implementing an option I bet. Last but not least: maybe several bought the game before realising that they don't have fun with it because of it being too hard. Game would be financially successful the same way ... but sure - it's not important if the customers actually are happy or not.

It is ONE use who complained and since - like you said - difficulty and/missing difficulty option is an important game of Hollow Night and probably its predecessor I don't consider this to be off topic at all.

You are kidding, right?

If they're going to add a difficulty setting, they should provide multiple options rather than just a single setting. For example, we could have:
* Normal enemy difficulty
* Boss difficulty (set this to hard and main game bosses can start to get as hard as those added in the expansions)
* Platforming difficulty (affects areas like the White Palace)
* Death penalty (allow it to be disabled, so you never lose anything on death, but nothing else changes difficulty-wise)
* Destroy all enemies feature (must set in the options, then if you pause the game there will be a "destroy all enemies" option. Choosing this presents a confirmation prompt (default "No"), and if the player chooses "Yes", all enemies in the room, including bosses, die instantly).

Also, each option should come with an explanation, and in particular should mention what settings the game was designed around.

(Also, while we're at it, we could add settings like "sudden death", where you die in one hit, or other challenge settings.)

For some games a difficulty setting doesn't make sense. Take some roguelikes for example. Permadeath is an important feature for them. You die, you learn, you start from the beginning and one day you'll succeed. Dying and starting over is part of the concept and part of the fun. If you'll add difficulty settings and the possibility to manually save and reload at any time, you chance the whole concept (and also the artistic vision).

With manually saves and without permadeath, many players will save-cheat their way through the game and probably give it a bad rating, because it is too short or too easy. And that only happens because they never played the game like it was intended by the developer.

So yes, a difficulty setting is great for some games, but not every game needs one. I've also played several games that were too hard for me. I still enjoyed the time I've spent with them until I gave up. Quite often I also kept the installed game on my HDD. Because I might return and finally beat the game one day in the future.

You know you're not contractually obligated to beat the true final boss, right? :P

Take the pantheon of hallownest for example, a ton of people didn't *even* get close to finish it, they patched/nerfed some bosses later to make it more feasible, but it's still a real challenge for the most dedicated players, it's a conscious design choice.

A casual, less skilled player can beat the game without many hiccups and get the normal ending, the rest of the content is 100% optional

Oh sweet Buddha and Saint Max Stirner, here we go!

1) I am the one who can, and who will say the people have time. And also the one who knows it to be a fact. Person on average has 16 hours per day, more for some who use experimental sleeping methods or can work without 8 hours of sleep per day. Rest of the time he/she is completely free to spend how he/she wants. And here comes the argument about work being mandatory for survival at least, and I agree for the most part, but since we live in "free market" society, resourceful person might find a way to optimize his/her work time, or even earn his/her living doing something he enjoys. Moving on from work, we are left with 16 ideally, or 7-8 worst case scenario, free time to do whatever he wants. Family/friends and other hobbies included, and none of those are mandatory. Nobody forced anyone to spend time on family/friends or any hobbies (gaming included), people engage in them because they want them, because they desire them. Simple facts. And when somebody tells me they don't have enough time to play games more than couple of hours per day, it seems to me more like somebody who: a) can't optimize his life; b) has more important things in their life then gaming. I respect b), but I don't respect a).

Some indie developers can't allow themselves to lose a single customer, some definitively can. I can't speak for Team Cherry. I could make argument about nothing being important, but since I already pretending this is important... First thing first: a) you can't make all (potential) customers happy, it's not realistic; b) making customers happy might not be an important thing to game designers; c) nobody speaks for every customer. I have no doubt putting difficulty slider would make some customers happy, just as I don't have doubt it would make some other customers angry. Frankly I am not interested in that, and more importantly, have a feeling both of those groups are insignificant if you aren't interested in absolutely maximizing profit.

2) I am pretty sure there is more than one person. I don't think difficulty setting is more important for Hollow Knight then for any other.

3) No, I am not kidding. I believe majority of problems for the most individuals are caused by socio-economical situation... as well as people not understanding themselves and the world. Asking for better work environment for everybody might help in solving the first thing.
Realistically, 100% of the content is 100% optional;)

Yes, I am aware of this. And like I said, long before I even was close to the regular boss I had almost given up on the game and uninstalled it twice. So maybe I am the worst player in the world but I don't think that I am the only one who had frustrating difficulties with Hollow Knight. I liked the style, I liked the story, I liked the general gameplay and the idea - but I never liked the difficulty that was forced upon me. In fact in one scene I used a trainer to get better without having to get to the boss enemy again and again.
And you really believe this nonsense? Well, I guess then we are finished.

I believe gaming is nonsense, important people waste their time on hookers and cocaine.

100% optional to reach some sort of closure, I mean!

Honestly, in my case I consider permadeath to be such a bad idea that it's actually a dealbreaker; providing the option to disable it may result in me buying games that I otherwise wouldn't.

(Also, note that the permadeath option should be independent of other options; I would like to be able to make the game brutal or chaotic without having to enable permadeath. In particular, the combination of high chaos (removing some of the safeguards that prevent the game from being unfar, like allowing high level monsters (and items) to possibly spawn later) and no permadeath is quite appealing to me.)

It's worth noting that I abandoned Hollow Knight early due to a completely different issue; my desktop could not handle it without overheating to the point where CPU throttles to the point where the game is unplayable.

Don't do this, don't give me hope...

There is a hope, mate! She's around a corner.
Again we meet little ghost.

Upcoming "Edge" magazine (December 31st issue) is going to bring some news.

That new article yesterday was pretty informative......
...... but we still don't have a release date. :(
(sad vessel noises)

This pretty much sums up my experience.
This is probably the only thing I will buy on release day, ever!
+1

IMHO "devs" are the single ones who have a say in how a game should be played. With so many games nowadays, there is not a real issue with not being able to play a determined game because of dificulty.
Like it or not, every game has some dificulty to anyone (myself can't get around "RPG's"), I like options but some games are not worth playing just for the sake of playing (EG Celeste, Super Meat Boy, Spelunky and the list goes on), dificulty is what makes the game good.