My guess is that it serves to quench the common player criticism of "omg, this game is so unbalanced, it's like the developers don't even play their own game!"

My guess is that it serves to quench the common player criticism of "omg, this game is so unbalanced, it's like the developers don't even play their own game!" And, from what I remember, the LoL community generally really enjoys playing with Riot employees. Back when I used to play (several years ago now) I don't remember running into a single toxic Riot employee. Then again they didn't have very many employees then.