You mentioned a small company, that means:
- They have a small HR department (if any)
- They probably don't have any defined hiring process
- They may have no experience hiring internationally
- All the employees are probably super busy
Note that these don't necessary go away with larger companies, but it's important to keep this in mind.
Now, more generally, a lot of things affect hiring timeframes. 2-3 days is ridiculously fast for the entire process to take place.
- Availability of decision makers. If people are traveling/on vacation, this will extend the time, if they are required for a decision. That's just how it is. If Joe needs to interview you and is traveling for two weeks, you won't get interviewed unless Joe can interview you while traveling (or vacation, etc). Or if Joe has a project deadline and can't take 2 hours or 4 hours and interview you because
- Urgency of opening. Some companies have specific "hire for this role" positions. Some have more a policy of, "hire smart people whenever." The former has more urgency to hire than the other. "Do we even need this person?"
- Manager priorities. You aren't that special to the manager hiring for this position. While it is in his/her interest, it's not really that important. They have jobs to do, expectations, and whether someone gets hired in 1 week or 1 month is most often not that meaningful - especially since a new person is even more work.
- International. There are a variety of things required for someone to work internationally. Most companies have minimal experience with this. It might take time for them to learn, understand their obligations, etc.
- Approvals. Companies have all matter of internal approvals required. This is affected by budgets, availability of money, profitability, how the company is organized, etc. For a small company that size they likely will have to go through quite a few decision makers in the company.
- Number of candidates. Companies that have 'rounds' of interviews generally want to get all the candidates through each round before proceeding. If there is someone else also applying who has other delays, then you might be delayed, because the company probably doesn't want to move some further than others (in case the others are better candidates).
- Organization level. Some companies are just more organized than others.
Now, with these in mind, realize that some companies (especially much smaller companies) can probably go through the entire process in a short period of time. It's easy to look at that list and see how a startup could either be very well organized for quickly making decisions or much slower.
It doesn't take very many of the above to "go wrong" to add 2 months to hiring timeframes. I recently applied for an internal job, which from when I knew about it to when I was offered it was nearly two months.
You mention too they are planning on starting a studio in your city. This will easily add time, as now they have to do all the above simultaneously with finding a location, determining who (if any) of their current employees will staff it, what international business laws exist and are relevant, securing funding, etc.
All that takes time and if it's not finalized there is no reason to make an offer to anyone until it is finalized.