Those are my thoughts as well. As I tried the rigid thing for a summer. Lots of body pain after rides from getting beat up. Not sure why people want to remove something that makes the ride more comfortable. Most forks you can lock out anyways to make it feel like rigid. So other than a small weight savings, probably not worth the money to swap out to a rigid fork.
I equate it to..."Hey I'm going to remove the shocks and struts from my car and replace them with concrete blocks"