Technically, one can't demonstrably say that characters who are DLC costumes or spirits are 100% deconfirmed. That is true. But acting like it means nothing either is ultimately less sensible, when evidence and reason point strongly in the favour of the roles being basically mutually exclusive.
One is taking a substantiated conclusion and treating it empirically. Not technically correct, but logically understandable. The other is ignoring virtually the entirety of the landscape to remind people of a minute possibility within a minute possibility. It's basically the "so you're saying there's a chance" meme.
I guess it's better than complaining about them but jeez it makes people look dumb, lol.
Actually, there is more evidence towards it being wrong than being right, purely by way of the narratives being pushed by the Smash community at large ALWAYS being proven wrong.
This same logic was used for Spirits, and you all SWORE up and down that no character who was a base-game Spirit could EVER get in as playable and wrote of thousands of characters...and then you were wrong. This happened before about characters from rival companies, irrelevant characters, and characters that even the main developer himself in the past said couldn't happen but then did. If anything, Smash itself is proof of inevitability and change, and of proving it's own community wrong. Remember when Smash would never get DLC because old-fashioned Nintendo? Remember when Cloud was impossible? How many times do you have to use logic that gets proven wrong before you decide to take a different approach?
Besides, as I've stated way too many times now, none of this logic matters due to DLC still being in play and because of Sakurai's own words. Sakurai HEAVILY considered Spring Man being the chosen ARMS character before going with Min Min, even though he was a spirit, costume and an AT. Let me try and break down what that means in simple terms.
It means that no prior form of content for a character is a valid reason for them to not become playable in the future. In other words, every fan rule about content in the game is already destroyed, and it already was before Min Min because so long as more content is negotiated for things can change. RE could get a character in a FP3 even though they had a spirit event, because what was planned then and what can be done now are two separate things.
If anything, there is more evidence to substantiate that whatever narrative the Smash community at large is pushing at the time is likely going to be booty-blasted into orbit, since they have been nothing but wrong.
Now a more accurate assumption would be 'If a costume shows up in this pass, they likely don't have plans for that character currently, but that could change later' which I completely agree with...except returning costumes don't fit this narrative, only new ones. Old costumes are just recycled content to make another seventy-five cents with minimal effort, adding the least amount of touch-ups so that it is at least worth spending some money on to a consumer. They get shoved in wherever they can fit them, and it's VERY clear they plan on returning them all and that they always planned on them all returning from the beginning. Thus, if you already planned for all these costumes to return via DLC early in development, why would that stop you from negotiating to make them playable later on, ESPECIALLY if they can make you even more money? You wouldn't, and thus old costumes imply nothing but an easy cash in.
New costumes imply that they currently have no plans to make that character playable this time around due to the effort to make new assets, but the future is still open, and arguably Deluxe/Premium Costumes imply no future intent for that character which is why such a costume I believe is the most difficult scenario. None of this applies to Geno nor Waluigi, Paper Mario has nothing but a couple of PNGs blocking his way, and considering the evidence of high chances of more big Mario announcements it makes sense for one to start to entertain the possibility of a Mario character coming to Smash soon.
