From launch until now, creating a PSN account was optional due to technical issues. And while this wasn't properly conveyed to the playerbase, the game was sold in tons of regions where you straight up can't make a PSN account. Something like 50+ out of 123 regions where the game was sold cannot make PSN accounts. And using a VPN or lying about your region to make an account is a bannable offense.

The privacy complaints I have more of an issue with since GameGuard, the DRM used, is just as much, if not more, of a privacy issue compared to Sony's horrible data security and invasive data harvesting. GameGuard has kernel level access to the entirety of your system while it's running, usually installs itself as an on boot up background process, and has been caught by anti-virus software editing files outside of the game directory.

The first is a genuinely refund worthy issue, if not a class-action lawsuit in the making, while the second one is people being ignorant to how much data they're actually giving away.

I’m curious how you are so bold to say something as patently false as your first sentence with such confidence knowing that anyone with the game can deactivate it in settings and it works without a PSN account anyway.