Well, first off, this is a 600 GPU! I did not spend this much on my GPU and I am playing at 4k, your argument of most gamers aren't playing at 4k goes both ways, most are also not spending this much on a GPU. Also if you are spending this much in a GPU then even if you're playing at 1440p you're probably considering upgrading to 4k at some point, would be nice to have a GPU capable of that.
Secondly, Yes, they Are using over 11GB of VRAM and one of them almost 16GB, thats the literal reason why hogwarts legacy had bad performance for many gamers at launch, the stuttering was caused by the game loading textures, it was only after an update that made the game load low res textures and then try to load high res during the next seconds that the stuttering on this game disappeared (it also has to do with memory bandwith games with faster GDDR memory or just larger memory bus had less issues with that) other recent games with actual performance issues caused by a lack of VRAM and/or low memory bandwith include RE4 and The Last of Us part 1.
I can even tell you why this is happening: DEVs are just making the memory management systems on their games to take full advantage of the large RAM/VRAM capacity of consoles, and when porting to PC they're failing to understand many gamers have hardware with low VRAM, and the VRAM is actually separate from RAM on PC, so they launch the game expecting 16GB and then you only have 8GB... Since they didn't build the management system to handle lower amounts of VRAM, instead of rendering low res images, the game stutters while loading. So after launch they receive backlash and go back to rework the entire memory system. Will this get better over time? I wouldn't bet on that. DEVs will simply state you need a 12GB GPU for 1440p and if you don't that's just sad for you. Of course you can always just lower texture quality, but then again, U$600 on a GPU to play on lower graphical settings? Also look at the size of the 4070 die, it's WAY SMALLER than a 2060, its power consumption is rather low for a 70 class card of 2023, this is literally the chip that would be a 60 class card in other generation but they are selling as 70 class on an 80ti class price, and you are still defending them? Oh silicon prices are higher, yes, they are like 30% higher, NVIDIA is charging 400% the price per square milimiter of die area!