I don't know the intricacies of publisher/developer relations, but I don't think that CDPR demanded the game to be regionally priced. And even here they wanted to introduce it because they were strongarmed by the publishers who supposedly don't want to sign up with GOG because of the lack of regional pricing.
For distribution on physical media you still need a publisher who has the logistics etc., and my guess is that all of them are demanding regional pricing, so it wouldn't mattered who the publisher is.

While Namco-Bandai does demand regional pricing, it was CDPR that asked them to publish the game again. They could have tried to find a publisher who wouldn't throw a hissfit over a worldwide price, but they didn't. Assuming the lawsuit didn't extend beyond the 2nd Witcher game, it's all CDPR's choice and thus, fault.

Da, Comrade Catovski. Am always ready to be activated by NKVD. I mean, to spread glorious news of people's revolution!

It's all speculation. On the other hand kudos for GOG for compensating for the price difference. It's a nice gesture...

Assuming the lowest price comes from Russia, it's actually $23-$84. (90 Australian Dollars equal about $84 American ones.)

Yes, it was a foregone conclusion that W3 was coming out with regional pricing. When GOG first announced the initiative there were three games that were touted as being coming here thanks to their regional pricing implementation - Age of Wonders 3, The Witcher 3, and third one I have to go back to the thread to find (unless someone beats me to it). So I imagine the contracts and all were solid even at that point, and they couldn't back out of this one even as they reversed their stance on regional pricing as a site-wide change.

Hehe, unfortunately I'm not sure if it will help this time. However I hope that in about 2 years the regional price will go away.

I doubt very much CDPR demanded the game to be regionally priced, but they still gave the distribution to a company that they knew would do exactly that.
No regional pricing was supposed to be one of GoG's core values. This is not a small increase either it is almost an increase of 100% if TW3 is $45 us.

The Witcher 3 FAQ warns that age based regional restrictions are not applied yet to Witcher 3 but may happen. So yeah, be careful with that.
They never did this btw... they reaffirmed their commitment to try and get fair prices out of developer/publishers, but left it ultimately in their hands still, but they never reversed their stance on committing to adding regional pricing.

As of yet there is no enforcement of the restrictions as we know. However that might change. As for the client, they've stated that it's completely optional. Like desura.
It's $60US I think.

Regional pricing is understandable for all the games where CDRP is not the developer. But to regionally price their own game on gog is ridiciolus. At least they could state in their Witcher 3 post - One world, fair price policy does not apply to Witcher 3. Sure plenty of people will buy it. But a lot less then they would otherweise.

They did reverse their pledge to change the whole catalogue to regional pricing, at least as far as I have gathered from their "back to our roots" manifesto. And so far it seems that they have kept games from coming out regionally priced except for two of those we knew were already contracted to be so. Time will tell if they can maintain these pledges, of course, but my perception is that they have gotten back on course as much as they could.

$60us to $84us is better but still a nasty increase. This is all for a digital product that doesn't incur anywhere near the distribution costs of a hard copy.

I guess it was stupid of me for trusting GoG to stand by their core values. Never be loyal to a business for they will hold no loyalty to you.

Thanks, got it.
So we might have 'rating-based' restrictions right here, e.g. Australian or German 'less violent' version? Sounds sad.
Of course, but it wouldn't be 'just downloader', as now. We'll see.