Suffering and abuse is often free too. I rather not sign up for it though

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Arrowhead, Sony and Valve are all at fault here, too bad there won't be any repercussions for them.
I hope as many people as possible get a refund, but I honestly highly doubt that.

The game practices digital bondage, making this inevitable. From the moment I realized the weakness of the Internet, it disgusted me. Embrace Offline superiority for a better gaming future!

I know I have the hottest and spiciest take here, but you know what? No, I don't feel bad for the players. This is the ongoing problem with digital games: your average person consumes with little to no thought. Sorry but no, ignorance is not a valid excuse. Helldivers 2 is a GaaS i.e. live service game, therefore it's not unrealistic by any means to have some controversy around by pulling something the players will hate. Remember Diablo 3/4, and Overwatch 2? Destiny 2? Yeah, those eventually blew over. Anyway, Sony and Arrowhead are absolutely 100% in the wrong for not disclosing that PSN accounts were a hard requirement and letting it slide for so long. They deserve the fallout though.

As much as I hate EU style top-down control, I think them using the regulatory power to ban companies from pulling this kind of crap would be better for the consumer.

It is apparently possible. Steam will auto-deny it the first time if you played more than two hours (their standard policy), but if you re-submit it for manual review, there are claims that Steam does provide refunds even if you played 100+ or more hours.

If that is actually true, then at least Steam has some integrity left.

I would rather not create a PlayStation (PS) account, even if it is free. I would rather not create a bethesda.net account, I would rather not create a 2K, Take-Two, or a Rockstar Games Social Club account, I would rather not create a Paradox Interactive account just for a launcher, I would rather not create a Epic Games account, I would rather not create a Earth.net account, I would rather create a MicroSoft Xbox account, I would rather not create any of those twenty accounts that exist.

Yeah... ALL Accounts are free...!!! Lets praise this fact. Sorry bro... or sis...
Gamers indeed was even upset just for the fact of having to create a new account, no matter if it is actually legally possible or not. The reviews are simply far into the "red zone", clearly signaling a general rage and not just the rage of the rather limited "locked out users".

I saw the PSN third party thing the very first time I went on the page to look up this game when it came out, Thank god I skipped it by seeing that and never knew they temp disabled it for a bit then enabled. I saved money and a headache for sure.

Anything that requires a log in I stay away from, I only have my GOG and my Steam account and don't want anything else for gaming besides those 2.

Good mentality because if it comes to accounts, less is more.
I am not that crazy for demanding just one single account but 2-3 accounts is sufficient for having a healthy competition and not to much hassle with a bloat of totally unnecessary accounts.

100%, Valve is at fault too in their response. Yet somehow all the fanboys will look the other way and even defend a multi-billion dollar corporation because "It's Sony's fault" and "Valve has done so much for PC gaming!"

Valve can take additional steps going forward to prevent such controversies such as manually reviewing terms with devpubs requiring 3rd party accounts and only selling to regions that is compatible with PSN to avoid such fiascos, have an opt-out auto-refund system for everyone who bought Helldivers 2 through them, or re-evaluate distributing games requiring 3rd party accounts altogether.

Clearly, they could be taking more steps to protect their customers who vocally support them all the time. But sadly they won't because it's clear they don't give a shit about them. But tell a Steam fanboy and they'll call you an idiot because they've been conditioned to love Valve's anti-consumer practices.

If future Sony games coming to GOG required 3rd party PSN accounts, that's a big no from me.

Sony has reversed its decision:
https://nitter.poast.org/PlayStation/status/1787331667616829929#m

Edit: whoops, already posted above.

Well, you see, person, is that most GaS games usually need two accounts on Steam, as well as all the other games (e.g. UBI, Paradox, EA et al) that need 2 accounts for at least mutliplayer to work. Players do not seem to have any problem ith that at all. It is kinda a "do as I say, don't do as I do" situation. If they had only needed to create a second accound, yes some people ould grumble a bit but then do it. History tells us this is the case. The problem is that this is not just another account, but a PSN account, which comes with another set of problems.

Well, now that is surprising. A corporation reacting to community blowback not in the span of years, but within days? Or even at all?

Call me dangerously optimistic, but times might actually be starting to improve. Although the game is apparently still delisted in the regions without PSN services, so this might just be a temporary appeasement move.