The issue isn't so much the PSN requirement, its the PSN requirement after 4 months of building up your character and buying in game currency. If this had been a requirement on day 1, people would grumble, but it wouldn't cause outrage. It's a rug pull, a subversion of expectations, the antithesis of what AH was supposed to be doing.

it feels like a betrayal.

Not to mention the required PSN account, means you now have to accept the PSN terms and conditions and if you don't you lose 4 months of character work and any in game currency you bought..

PLUS PSN is only available for 69 countries, about 33% of all countries in the world. That means many helldivers simply cannot make a PSN account at all, and are facing the prospect of losing everything (unless they lie to make a PSN account using a VPN, which is banned by the PSN terms of service, so a real catch-22).

.... so.... a betrayal