Yea, and that reason was they where accessible in multiplayer. The fact that they where removed has NOTHING to do with people who want to make the game "easier". To be perfectly honest, Hard is simply a level of excessive frustration, and I don't know of really anyone that can PROVE that they've beaten the game on hard. And as for anyone wanting to edit the game to make it more of what they want to be, go for it! But note that any such changes will invalidate your game, in other words, you won't be able to play with anyone else. You'll have to restore it all by either reinstalling or replacing modified files. Make backups if you don't want to reinstall!
Any small change will cause the game to desync and crash.