You understood him wrong.
Is this based on something specific, or is that just your opinion?
This is based on what people were asking in the chat back then. Swen practically used "Act 1" as short for "the part of the game that is available in the early access".
As my own opinion: try to imagine how ridiculous it will look if at full release we will be capped at level 4 till we move on to Act 2. It would be normal thing if they would just put no more than enough EXP for level 4 in Act 1, but that's not the case already.
