Never underestimate the power of the human ego or the almighty dollar. It's just unfortunate that in many cases these motivators get used for corrupt purposes.

EDIT - Since not everyone is familiar with the RIOT games example.

In the case of RIOT, they use it to control external discussion about their game and manage PR. Since the LoL subreddit is the largest hub for LoL related discussion in the western world, it's worth it to them to play kingmaker with the moderators (and they've given those mods the same power over Valorant now as well) and place them into jobs, or just outright pay them.

Of course, this turns into corruption because the mods have straight up banned credible journalists from the space, as well push discussion into uncomfortable directions. (Hating on certain people is not allowed, hating on others totally is.)