i recently played with a level 12 riot employee named "riot pokeaotics" and i didnt think he was a noob because he clearly knew what he was doing and i even looked him up and its clear that he is an emplyoee working for riot as a software intern. its just ironic how riot discourages smurfing but yet theirs an employee smurfing.
They don't really "discourage" smurfing, and a lot of them do it. There are both healthy and harmful ways to smurf.
It's not surprising imo. I've played several MOBAs that are much smaller when they were just starting out, and the devs openly stated that they use smurfs to get an idea of what is happening at each level of play, so I doubt Riot wouldn't do the same tbh. Sure, you can get a general idea of what's going on through data, but experiencing and seeing it all first hand is a little better, it just takes more time which is why they don't do it all the time and what not.
