Generally speaking yes games are "easier" than most games a couple of years ago. Why exactly? Well we could spend months on this and never really find out what's the source. There are still some welcomed exceptions though (most of which are of course seen as "too difficult").
I could name a few I guess, from my own recent experiences...
Dragon Age: Origins, on Nightmare (no mods, no extra godlike items, just vanilla) isn't particularly easy, I HAD to pause for about 90% of the battles and MANUALLY engage EACH mobs individually with the proper party member (Alistair tanking and taunting, Morrigan/Wynn for Healing, CC'ing, Sten for DPS, Ogren for general melee purpose, Leliane for Traps and Bard buffs, etc), I STILL haven't finished that specific Nightmare playthrough, I started it about four months ago and I only play that specific game-in-progress once in a while because it's very demanding in terms of tactics and I (well, the entire party) die very often, but almost every fights feel like I'm trying to take down the Sacred Ashes' High Dragon (and I can't imagine how hard that one will be on Nightmare). As a side note, the "energy" Dragon boss in Awakening (can't remember the actual name of it) is from what I can remember one of the most difficult boss of the game (I.E of both Origins and Awakening).
Mass Effect 2 on Insane is... quite insane yes, still have a game-in-progress on Insane and I haven't touched it in months as well (difference with that one and Origins is that ME2's Insane brings frustration when I die, contrarily to DAO's Nightmare where I feel I HAVE to start again until I beat the damn battle).
S.T.A.L.K.E.R., seriously guys, no one thought about that one? Even playing it on Normal can often be difficult. I once tried playing on Veteran in Clear Sky, never made it past the checkpoint after the Swamp (and I won't bother trying that again).
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (one of my all-time favorite sleeper hit) on Hard (or whatever the difficult was called, I do think it was named "Hard", not sure anymore) was indeed hard, I made it but damn, that game wasn't easy.
Painkiller on highest difficulty, I tried once, made it to that Frankenstein-like giant boss, never beat him. That game is long gone though I might try it again eventually, and if I recall correctly Battle out of Hell was even more difficult.
Well anyway, I could name a good number of recent games I played that were difficult, but I had to go for the higher difficulty options in the game's settings, are most players complaining about games being too easy even bothering to change those difficulty options to start with? Or are they just clicking on "New Game" immediately and expect the difficulty of it to adjust as it goes for their own taste out of the big blue or something? Anyhow, yeah, generally I agree, most games aren't challenging, but there's still a good number of "exceptions".