The developer wanted to create scarcity or at least trim down the humungous supply of their token so I think it does make sense that they burn some of the tokens along the process. This is to limit the inflation that will pull the price down. It is only one known strategy to attract investors making them think of the future scarcity of the token which means, less supply more demand = higher prices.
You assumption could be right, wrong or both. You don't have a perfect explanation why dev is doing it. I'm assuming OP was inspired by "RushMoon" burning process.