I bet it was the incoming refunds/lawsuits in the non-PSN countries that was the decision maker. The refunds or litigation wasn’t worth the $$$. The normal gamers that were just angry didn’t change shit. They are used to angry gamers, they don’t care.

The timeline is this:

• game gets launched with psn requirement
• huge demand and server load make linking psn for PC players buggy and difficult
• psn requirements are disabled “temporarily” around that time to ease the load
• the game becomes even more successful, tens of thousands of players buy and install it, without ever being prompted to make a psn account
• Sony has wording in their PC requirements that said linking to psn is optional for PC users
• now, months later, Sony decides they want more psn users for their metrics, and make a psn account mandatory retroactively
• huge amounts of players feel duped out of their product, especially those from regions steam serves, but Sony doesn’t, because they will essentially lose access to their product completely. Others are mistrustful of Sony’s data protection record, they got hacked with disturbing frequency over the years, and dont want to give them their data on principle, especially with the knowledge that the game ran perfectly fine for months without psn
• Players are up in arms, barraging the arrowhead (who were forced by Sony to do this) community managers with hate
• players review bomb the absolute shit out of the game on steam, causing it to go from mostly positive to mixed over the course of a day
• Sony half heartedly rolls back the requirement after a weekend of huge community backlash, poor press coverage, and depressed arrowhead CEO tweets