I made an account because I'm qualified to talk about this topic :-) I've spent a considerable time testing every corner case of UX, and DX of an app attested service.

App attestation can fail on simulators, Graphene OS, dev builds, I've seen it all. There is one check you can do to see if an app was side loaded, so indirectly, can require Google account.

Title is still misleading though, as it explicitly mentions accounts.

Come September, there will be no side loaded apps on Android.