Rocket said in an interview not to long ago that he intended to add a suicide animation to the game that you access in game, though I suppose you'd have to find a weapon before you could blow your own brains out. Anyways, it doesn't really matter what your or my opinions on the matter are at this point, if rocket feels like they need to test what kind of impact removing the respawn button will have on the game then he is well within in his right to do it, because alphas are for testing mechanics that have an impact on gameplay. He's not a stubborn guy, if it turns out to hurt the game he'll put it back in.