Indeed.
You might save yourself a lot of frustration by just buying it via Steam (personally i usually avoid buying Steam products if i can). But for this title, the international working patches seems to only be downloadable via Steam.
Anyways, been playing over 30 h since i bought it via Steam and not one crash.
(Sorry for posting similar posts in both "Bug" Threads, but since the threads are split i thought it might help someone not checking the other)