Running MOTB, first the launcher and then the game proper both try to connect to internet... why?

same here. it says that your copy is outdated and tries to update it but it always fails. It definetly should not do that though at all. All our updates we are supposed to get from GOG.

As far as I can tell, it's the launcher attempting to search for updates. Problem is, the updater part of the launcher is utterly broken and unable to update itself.