With the game due out in three weeks, my guess is there's very little "beta" about this. Anyone have an educated guess when the game is sent to publishers for production? A day after beta ends? Already?

I think this is more like a demo or a way to get the game installed on millions of computers so that buying it is as easy as possible (a click away). I don't know about their publishing relationship but perhaps they get a better cut on electronic sales and this definitely helps increase those.

That said I'm downloading it now :)