Oh, good catch. I didn't notice to the point that I stared at your message thinking "what do they even mean, it's the opposite, we usually have to wait one week for the hard mode to drop but this time we have it at launch???" and it's only when I opened the notice to re-read it that I saw what you mean. The cleared chapter requirement is the thing that's moving, right?

As a day one player who only started playing MD in hard mode last season, I would say that, one: it's not tedious by essence, it really depends on what you like in a game. I refused to touch hard mode because I hate difficulty in games, if I could somehow get Limbus' story without any gameplay I would do it with no hesitation. I only started playing hard mode when I realized that with max level IDs it was actually basically the same. However if you like challenge being stuck in normal is probably annoying, totally agreeing on that. But also, two: as someone intimately familiar with normal MD, I really wouldn't call it spoiler free. Yeah it doesn't have the most recent main bosses of the Cantos, but everything else is already there. Cantos 1 to 3 have absolutely all the fights, other Cantos have all the common enemies and mechanics which is already huge spoilers, the Intervallos have their end boss... So trying to avoid spoilers by limiting the difficulty level doesn't seem like a very efficient measure to me?

So yeah, it's a weird choice and I'd be super curious to see the reasoning behind it!