It's more that those things likely never crossed anyones mind during development. A lot of everyday things you just assume are the way they are where you live everywhere, until you see they aren't. And even being aware of that you are always going to miss things.
I doubt this had any actual influence on which studio ended up working on the game, but it is a nice side effect.
If I'm interpreting the quote correctly, it's because if they have to exclude the EU because of competition laws, that implies they know it's anticompetitive in some eay, yet roll it out elsewhere anyway.
Which shouldn't be surprising though, if companies refrained from anticompetitive behaviour because they think it's wrong, we wouldn't need these laws.