amok: no it is not, it is completely optional. I have and have played both of them (over 500 hurs in Skyrim, and 400 in Fallout 4.... i need to get a life) both modded and un-modded. I have never touched Creation Club, not even made an account. But the fact that it exists, and these games came here with it, would trigger quite a lot of people even though it is completely optional.
DRM-Free generally means
"the game is shipped without DRM", not
"the game has DRM as part of its core monetization, pretend it isn't there". That you haven't personally bought anything via CC is irrelevant as it doesn't mean there aren't background CC connections going on, ie, the game does not know what content you / others have or have not purchased until after it's performed the check to know what to unlock for those that have and if it's coded to do that (go online and perform an ownership check via the CC servers), then it's obviously a DRM'd game that's going to fail to work without a client / online connection. So the
"triggered anurism" people are entirely correct in saying that DRM code needs removing in order for a DRM-Free GOG version to work if that's what the CC code does 'under the hood'.
Zetikla: But to stay on topic: Why have the LE version on sale? its NOWHERE near as optimized as SE, its more unstable with many mods
The reason some have suggested it is because removing the one layer of DRM (essentially Steam client check the early original / LE games came 'wrapped' in) is a lot more trivial than removing two layers of DRM (Steam client check + all the online CC monetization code that's part of the SE game (rather than the client)), and the publishers may be more open to that as a compromise. Same way we have games here minus stuff like "online daily challenges" as a compromise.