Sony boss admits forcing PC gamers into PlayStation accounts can "invite pushback," but insists they have to keep games safe – which doesn't really track in single-player

gamesradar.com:

Sony president, COO, and CFO Hiroki Totoki acknowledged that the company's plan to push PlayStation Network account linking on famously resistant PC gamers can "invite pushback" – rather, "offering" these accounts, in his words – but the company is sticking to its guns, insisting that it's essential to ensure that "anybody can enjoy games safely."

Via interpreter, Totoki discussed the company's learnings in the Q&A portion of Sony's latest financial call. 

"We have learned a lot," he begins. "The way to face the issues regarding PC, for instance. The PlayStation accounts that we have offered – well actually, by offering them, for instance, sometimes that tends to invite pushback. But for the live service games, in order to maintain order of the gaming so that anybody can enjoy the games safely, we need to create an environment conducive to that and, of course, enjoying the game freely. 

"Having some restrictions, may not call it rule, but to ask the users and gamers to follow the manner, those manners are very important and we have to continue to seek the best way to achieve this." (Despite some translation awkwardness, I've kept the exact wording of this interpreted quote to avoid any potential confusion through paraphrasing, though a smoother version of Totoki's comment here might be: 'I'd maybe not call it a rule.' I would, however, call it a rule, and we're getting to that.)

There are a few things to unpack here, and we can use a few PlayStation PC games to explain them. Firstly, the Helldivers 2 community temporarily imploded over mandatory PlayStation account linking earlier this year, after months of no-strings-attached fun ironically enabled by technical issues that prevented account linking at launch. 

This was easily the highest-profile "pushback" to Sony's PC praxis, and a rare dip for a game that's generally been a ginormous success for both PlayStation and developer Arrowhead. It was also a clear before-and-after moment: players were happy and the game