A lot of games increase difficulty by just turning up HP and attack numbers, and part of the fun of souls games is that that's really not how they handled difficulty.
It is, but most of their library is DRM free, so once you download it, those files are yours. Steam won't let you launch a game without logging into your account, gog doesn't even check.
I'm not going to argue the ethics of piracy, because the point is that a lot of people will do it if they otherwise cannot afford to buy games. Also, some games just never really go down in price, especially if you're talking nintendo. To this day Breath of the Wild is still $60 if bought new or digitally.
The problem that they're not considering is that if they raise the prices, more people are going to be priced out of buying the games, and will resort to piracy. The cost of living is absurd right now, and I can only afford a handful of $60 games a year.