I can confirm that Wolfgang’s finding also holds for me. The deleted DOP when using Remove is the same as the DOP I had PL8 export prior to using Remove to delete the image. A simple Recycle Bin Restore of the RAW and DOP resulted in the Master and its 2 VCs being accessible again in PL8.
As I already have an open ticket about this issue I’ll just add these findings to the ticket.
I still consider it a bug, as this isn’t the PL (MAC) behaviour. Furthermore, as I rely on PL8 creating DOPs automatically (I save the RAW images and DOP for long-term retention and don’t rely on the database at all) I wouldn’t find this workaround acceptable. It would place too much onus on remembering to manually force the creation of a DOP at the end of making changes to a RAW image.
UPDATE
Ticket updated with @Wolfgang’s findings.