Last week, Soulcalibur VI publisher Bandai Namco announced that the game will be getting a season pass of DLC fighters, and the first DLC fighter to join the game’s roster will be none other than series favorite Tira. However, fans weren’t happy about Bandai Namco trying to play up paid DLC fighters when the core game wasn’t even out yet, and recently one of the game’s producers offered an explanation for the move.

As was recently reported by comicbook.com, Soulcalibur VI producer Motohiro Okubo sat down with pro fighting game player Kayane for a candid conversation about the upcoming game, and during that conversation they touched on the issues surrounding Tira’s unveiling.

Okubo wholly admitted that it would have been better to hold off on the Tira/season pass reveal, but he also had a pretty good explanation as to why the reveal was made in the first place. It seems Tira wasn’t originally going to be part of Soulcalibur VI’s roster at all, but so many fans requested her that Okubo himself went to the design team and asked them to add her in. Since the game is so close to its launch date, working Tira into the core roster would have been difficult, so instead the design team decided to make her into a DLC fighter instead:

“About Tira, having her in [SoulCalibur VI] needed some pretty complicated adjustments, so much so that she nearly didn’t make the cut. After we had announced Soulcalibur VI, a lot of fans asked for Tira, so I went to see the development team and asked them to put her in the game, so that’s why she isn’t in the main roster and is DLC.“

In a separate interview with Dual Shockers, Okubo also revealed the grim situation Soulcalibur VI finds itself in. Apparently, if the game doesn’t perform well from a sales perspective, it might be the very last Soulcalibur game that’s ever released. Here’s hoping the game meets Bandai Namco’s sales expectations when it launches in October.