If it was a real requirement they should have geo restricted the sale to countries that are allowed to make PSN accounts. Instead they bait and switched players who have been playing past the normal refund window, and now will have an unplayable game. Also the PSN account has nothing to do with fixing crossplay. Other games have functional crossplay without it. And Sony themselves say on their own website that PSN is not required to play Sony games on PC.
It does. It’s even cited in the abstract, and it’s the origin of bullshit as referenced in their title.