Okay so two things here..
You are telling us Riot employees are working on VFX updates in their 'free time', without being paid (and yes, that's what 'free time' means, if you're being paid for it it's not 'free time' is it?), and you expect us to believe this?
Assuming we do believe this, which is frankly pretty ridiculous, you're now telling us that a company worth over a billion dollars is not paying their employees for work implemented into the game because they are 'passion projects'?
Lastly, let's say this is all true, VFX updates have no influence on future VGU's, does that not strike you as just plain incompetent? Why bother doing an extremely minor update to a champion before a major one? it just doesn't make any logical sense, and neither does your response