I don't have this opinion lightly.
Arrowhead executives knew for 6 months before launch that this would be a mandatory PSN required situation. That happens when you take a deal with the devil and you take Sony's money.
By removing that requirement for 3 months at launch, they created a situation where many hundreds of thousands if not millions of players purchased a game they can no longer play at the end of this month. I don't blame them, they did what they thought they needed to do, and a very scrappy startup way, to get things working. But it was a failure of executive leadership to put them in a position where they've locked their own players out of the game, and their own money, and their progress.
I 100% believe this is a failure of the Arrowhead executive leadership. Their decisions have created this public outcry, and Sony is ostensibly taking the blame, because they're enforcing their contractual terms.
I predict Sony will back down, and allow an exception, at least for players who've already purchased the game in PSN blocked regions. But they're only going to do that to prevent themselves from getting dragged into regulatory quagmires around the globe.
From an executive position the Arrowhead CEO has completely failed, he put his financiers in a position where they are the public bad guys, and then when the heat turned up, the organization as a whole redirected the blame to the publisher, when they should have been the ones at fault. One might say this was a 4D chess move, to get their game free of the PlayStation Network requirements, but even if that's what falls out in the end, other executives looking at this performance will not appreciate it. Especially when it comes to them negotiating another project.
I do have a part to play. I am not blameless in all of this - it was my decision to disable account linking at launch so that players could play the game. I did not ensure players were aware of the requirement and we didn't talk about it enough.
We knew for about 6 months before launch that it would be mandatory for online PS titles.
Indeed an unpopular opinion but you're missing a key point that Sony, being the publisher, decides where the game is sold. They chose to sell it in countries that cannot create PSN accounts. A huge reason this blew up is because of that fact.. along with their (Sony) response to that, or at least the representatives people got responses from.
Whether it was an accident, stupidity, malice, whatever... Doesn't matter, Sony screwed that up.
Edit: On top of all that the PSN requirement was crippling the release of the game. If the CEO hadn't disabled the requirement to link to PSN the game may not be as successful as it is now.
Honestly the CEO probably saved the game and increased sales, which helps Sony...
6-7 years in development and 6 months before they drop this requirement that does little to nothing except inconvenience the customer, not to mention Sony's track record with data breaches...
Give me a break. Greed did this. Sony's greed. Nothing else.
Worth pointing out that the game being in development for 6-7 years likely means paperwork was already signed going that far back.
Arrowhead knowing about this 6 months earlier suggests their hand was forced.