Not too surprising, I imagine removing the PSN login was real close to just cracking the game entirely. Honestly not sure why people would buy the game and then use a third party tool to bypass the PSN requirement as opposed to just pirating the game to begin with.
Back in the day I would use NO CD cracks for games I legit owned because I just didn't want to have to change discs all the time when switching games.
DRM tends to negatively affect paying customers more than pirates, so I could easily see legitimate owners still using cracks to remove DRM that is causing them issues in their legally obtained game.
I made .iso files and mounted them in virtual drives to do the same thing. I could have used cracks but I didn't want a virus and I still had the delusion that doing things "fairly" actually meant anything.
Back in the days of windows xp and Alcohol 120% it didn’t. I remember having like 12 virtual disk drives each with an independent iso just to avoid swapping disks.
When I bought Fallouts 1, 2 and Tactics from EB like 15 years ago I couldn't run them even with the disc in the drive. The shitty securom was broken and refused to recognise the disc. It was only thanks to pirates that I was able to crack them and play the copies I fucking paid money for.
I think literally 5 people in the entire universe have ever uttered anything approaching the phrase "mods are for pirates". And you somehow encountered all 4 of the others.