No, this wouldn't have happened until May 30th as the tweet mentions. Starting May 6th is when new players would have been required to sign up for a PSN account before playing the game for the first time.
Was this drama over a promise in the future?
Yes, nothing actually changed on the players' side of things. The announcement was made and subsequently backtracked on before any updates to the game were even pushed out. No one was blocked from logging in at any point, but they were told that without a PSN account by the end of May, they would have been.