No, it was not always required to play the game. I've seen plenty of "account required" shit to play games in my time, but those are generally required to engage in online multiplayer, or competitive modes, and that was the assumption that I had when I played the game in the first week and bypassed the PSN account message. There was no warning that it would be switched to require PSN later. There was no notice that a PSN account would be required to make in-game purchases. There was no notice that PSN would be required just to load up the game, let alone play it single-player offline. I think I made a fair and reasonable assumption that I was playing the game to the fullest extent that I could without a PSN account. If I had received notice that a PSN account was required to play the game at all, then I would have not put ~150 hrs into it.

Let's go ahead and address some other bullshit arguments while I'm here, I've been dying for this to pop up on lemmy so I can comment...

1. Stop going wah it only take 120 seconds to setup ur account...

Let's face it, the people wronged here have put tens, if not over 100 hrs into playing a game, if you think the time required to setup the account is in any way, shape, or form, the arguement here, then you are a fucking moron.

2. Other games require to you have a PSN, Xbox, Ubisoft, bullshit corpo account...

Sure, but I don't play most of those games, or they offer offline or limited play without the account, or the game was free, or the account or was required to play the game from the beginning, enforced, and made obvious that was the stance on the issue. HD2 got so big because it was fun, and it was fun because it was free from bullshit (or at least reduced a significant amount by modern gaming standards). The game's success was built partly, if not majorly by not enforcing the PSN account for PC, backtracking on that now feels like a slap in the face and a kick in the nuts to players.

3. Other companies get hacked with your data, just give your data to Sony, it's probably leaked already.

How do you think we got in this mess in the first place? By giving up our data to corporations who do not treat it properly.

Finally, the game has worked fine for months without a PSN account. You can join matches, make friends, block dickheads and report greifers and hackers. Adding the PSN account only does 2 things for PC players; let's Sony sell your personal life, and massively increases the chance that you'll need to repurchase the game because of unnecessary "account issues".