Since Original Sin is published by Larian, there is no excuse here.
Unless Larian abandons retail (a significant portion of the game market, especially in places with poor or expensive internet access), they still need distribution for the game. That can either be achieved by making a deal with an existing distributor with contacts in place with retailers in a particular region, or Larian can divide their resources and try to build a distribution network from scratch in places they may not be particularly familiar with, at the same time as they are working on the game.
The French, German, Polish and Russian localizations are being handled by the distributor / publisher for those regions. Again, Larian could divide their resources and hire translators and voice actors in various regions to do it themselves. That would mean time and resources diverted from the game, or the localizations being delayed for months after the English release.
The distributors / publishers guaranteed a minimum number of sales, which gives Larian more money to put into making the game better. It also means Larian knows they will not loose money in the process, which would in no way be guaranteed if they had to come up with the money upfront to do all their own localization and make their own distribution deals from scratch.
Does Larian support regional pricing and more importantly does Larian forbid the selling of its games unless regional pricing is implemented?
The current Steam Early Access price is the release price of the game, for both digital and retail versions.
I do not know the contents of any contracts, and am not speaking for Larian in this, but given the available information, it seems obvious that regional pricing was necessary to get distribution deals. Larian would have looked at what it would take to do it themselves, and determined that either using distributors / publishers was the best option despite the restrictions required, or it was the only option since arranging localized retail distribution from scratch was simply not feasible.
But as i stated i'm realy angry on the fact that a kickstarted project where people all around the world participated to make it happen try to force changes to a brand (GOG) which worked out fine before.
If you read GOG's statements, they have had lots of games excluded as an option to bring there because of their single price policy, and in a few weeks plan to talk to a bunch of publishers about them reconsidering now that they can accommodate. Larian didn't force anything on GOG, D:OS is just one of the first new releases to have regional pricing.
