I've not heard any indication that there's going to be any change to the guidance that you can't buy the CE without a game key. Though I have a fuzzy recollection that one rationale for that was that the game key was actually on the box, so now that apparently it will be emailed instead (or as well) then it feels as though that doesn't stand up as well. Though I'd guess that from a cost perspective it's all the rest of the stuff in the box that Larian is trying to cover and the incremental cost of supplying a game key as well might be fairly trivial, and if so I can understand why they'd not want to open the can of worms of refunding costs of Early Access games and possibly ending up making a loss on a lot of the Collector's Editions.
That's all pure speculation though. If you still feel the position is unclear you could try emailing Larian Support (you can find details of how by going to the Support section from their homepage).
