First, it is important to clarify terminology. The base game that went gold for PC was version 1.0.0. However, the moment the game unlocked on Steam and the Epic Games Store, (labeled as version 1.0.1) was pushed live.
It is non-optional for most PC users, as the pre-patch version suffers from memory-related crashes after 2–3 hours of gameplay. god of war v101 day 1 patch build 8008283 updated