Yes, this is right - there is what is essentially a fully-functional "garbage collector" but its only job is to detect leaks in debug builds. Well, it also is used for detecting illegal memory layout changes during hot code changes...

One may say "then why not just make the GC optional like D", but when you design a library you really need to either design it for a GC or for manual memory management. Even for the basic string type - if Beef was a GC'd language then String would be immutable, but it's not so String is mutable. Totally different designs.