Except if it's a Steamworks enabled game (like this one) - you can uncheck all you want and it will still update. Only true fix is put steam into Offline mode.

Because it's Steamworks enabled which means they force the auto update because of the achievement factor would be my guess, can't have some people not patching when say there might be some exploit that allows them to get easy achievements. Every Steamworks game is exactly the same, unchecking the "keep my game up to date" is completely ignored and patches are applied with or without your consent, welcome to the brand new era of PC gaming.

No kidding, I miss the good old days where a developer had to get a game right by the time it hit disk (and I mean CD or Floppy disk) because they didn't have the crutch of the Internet to bypass good QA. Now a days they press Beta software to DVD and just patch it launch day, and every week until it's finally version 1.0

Keep up the good work guys! We all appreciate you putting up with developer bullcrap.