Some more thoughts…
Not sure if this is still a concern but, when some users removed these files they had subsequent issues installing maintenance versions. So keep this in mind (put the files back) if you get issues during the maintenance upgrades.
Also, to speed the start time up I used to add the Cubase .exe (actually the entire Cubase folder) as an antivirus exception. That resulted in a huge reduction in startup time. Like 30/45 seconds less. With my current setup this idea only resulted in an approx 5 sec startup reduction. To me, that was not worth it so I removed all the AV exceptions.
This topic is a great reason to vote for this ongoing feature request… 
Regards. 