From what I could gather about the Tira situation she originally might not have been in the game if not for fan demand:

“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.“
So at least based on what they've said, she was made in addition to the base game instead of simply being taken out of the base game.

You can split hairs on whether or not you think there should have been a DLC price on something that was ready by launch, but at least on their part it doesn't appear to be a result of malicious double dipping.

https://kotaku.com/for-some-reason-s...a-b-1829400014