Sorry to nitpick: They knew people would just work fine without them. But the scare is that now the truth is out in the open and they lost leverage.

Or… think like an adult… they have support contracts in place.

My argument here is that Arrowhead is not some great dev that is helpless.

Re-enforcing it after demonstrating it clearly works without makes it look scummy and greedy.

Day 1 policy was that PSN linking was mandatory. Arrowhead execs knew this. Players who bought the game in non-PSN countries should have gotten a pop-up banner saying as much instead of the payment screen.

Sounds like skill issue.