I'm copying this from my reply to Helena on the Kickstarter thread:
It seems that DRM-free means a lot of different things to different people. For us it's definitely the definition that refers to copy protection, copy prevention, and copy control, such that you can make backups and play offline. It's why we include direct IP and LAN play in addition to online play for multiplayer. It's why there's no copy protection on the game. It's also why we put it on GOG.
The link between that and not putting an auto-patch or mandatory day 1 patch system in place on the physical DVD is not at all obvious for us.I also honestly cannot recall us saying that there would not be a patch day 1. If I or anybody @Larian did that, that was in any case a very unfortunate mistake.
We always intended this game to be "live" as we'd be updating it continuously, given that the engine is core to our future strategy. In that vision, it's a normal thing to have a patch system in place and it's not abnormal to work with a mandatory day 1 patch.
The DVD is not a "coaster" either. It contains the majority of game data and will make the download significantly smaller.
We realise some people may not agree with that, but we have to make choices. We prefer to work on the game until the last minute and that means we need to use mandatory patching. We do this because it results in a higher quality game experience - and we think that in the long run this will be more beneficial for the large majority of players.
It's not perfect but from the space of possible options, to us this seemed the best.
