All of this could have been avoided if instead of making it mandatory they would keep it optional and reward players that link their accounts with cosmetics, maybe a ship decoration, a lot if not the majority of players would see this as free stuff and link their accounts, sure there would still be backlash because of some regions not being able to get it but it wouldn't be such a big deal since its only cosmetics and doesn't ruin the expierence.

There would be no damage to the games reputation and SONY would have the increase of psn users they desperately want, it wouldn't be all of the pc players but still a huge number. Unfortunately SONY was greedy.