Well, I guess they planned for it and then saw that it would allow you to bypass killing 9V bambi. Thus, they decided to take it out.

Not sure what is hard to understand about that. Why would you need that thing anyway? You can't craft with stone yet, you can't use a smelter yet.

It would only be good as to bang at some rocks and gather a lot of stones. *shrug* I mean, ok, if that's what you want to do... ;)