For me personally, it doesn’t matter much to link a PSN account to Steam. I will create an extra email address for that if necessary because I don’t use it anymore.
Besides this, I think that Sony and/or Arrowhead are doing something scandalous about this happening. That’s not how you treat your customers, plain and simple. If you want to temporarily disable linking accounts, which will remain mandatory in the future, you do not simply add a skip button. This way you certainly make it seem like it is an option, even if the Steam store page states otherwise. You are really creating an unclear story here.
Then people start looking for FAQs and reading about how and what to get clarity. Sony adjusting the FAQ on the day, or just after the day of the announcement, says enough. Then adjust the login page when starting the game with a clear message, it’s not that difficult.
In addition, the game should NEVER, NEVER, have been offered for sale where one is not allowed or cannot create a PSN account.
When I just bought the game and started it for the first time a few weeks after release, I also saw the message that it was mandatory to link accounts. I was already creating a PSN account because I didn’t have one and was already chatting about it with a few friends from my Steam friends list. They simply pressed the skip button and some no longer even remembered that it was mandatory.
When you can skip something without further context, you show that it is optional, very simple. How many times have you reinstalled Windows and MS made it seem as if an MS account was absolutely necessary while, after clicking once, there was a skip button or you could at least continue without an MS account.
