Following the controversy that followed Arc System Works announcing a large portion of the character roster in BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle will be locked behind DLC, the developer has finally explained (via Destructoid) why they made the decision, alongside details for the game’s pricing.

Here’s a breakdown on the game’s pricing structure, and its downloadable content:

• Retail: $49.99 (Physical & Digital)
• Cross Tag Character Packs (3 characters each, 6 in total): $4.99 each
• Cross Tag Character Collection (Characters Packs 1-6): $19.99
• Deluxe Digital Edition (main game & Cross Tag Character Pack 1-6): $69.99
• Cross Tag Character Pack 1 available for download free at launch (first two weeks only)

The game’s producer, Toshimichi Mori, talked up their shoddy messaging when the DLC plans were first announced.

“I’m in total agreement,” Mori said. “We’ve been making efforts to make the price accessible for everyone, but we should have communicated it a lot more clearly though so we didn’t have that misunderstanding. Our first mistake was announcing [fighter] Blake as downloadable content before saying he was free. What should have happened is that we should have said Blake is coming as downloadable content for free. But because of so many events late last year and early this year, we wanted to announce things little by little. Unfortunately the first announcement was muddled. We said Blake was downloadable content but we should have announced it all at once. That caused confusion and Arc is very sorry for that.”

He went on to defend their decision a bit:

“But at the same time not everyone is going to agree or understand what the developer thinks. From the development side it’s hard to convince everyone, but if we listen to everyone we’ll go bankrupt,” Mori said. “So what we can do is try to design downloadable content in a way where more people are understanding about it, which is basically all that we can do. I do agree with some people that downloadable content should be in the game to begin with, but thinking about the business side that isn’t always the case. As creators it’s always fun to continue developing for a certain title, but without the gamer’s support it’s hard. For more people to understand what downloadable content stands for, we can make efforts to clarify in the future how it fits into the game as a whole. Hopefully we’ll create a broader perspective.”

BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle is launching across Windows PC, PlayStation 4, and the Nintendo Switch on May 31st in Japan, and on June 5th in North America.