Alright, so my take on leaks in general, as the thread went in that direction...
The owners and higher ups of EA, Rockstar/Take-Two, Activision and the like... do you think they legitimately care from an artistic point of view if their game reveal is leaked? The answer is, of course, no, and that's evident from how they treat their workers. They care from a purely capitalistic point of view, without any consideration for the work the developer of the game put in, and when
they might want to reveal the game. Maybe if a development team under those companies is lucky they get some input, but my educated guess is they just get told when the game's being revealed, and are forced to go along with it.
Obviously, if a leak could harm a development team because the publisher is so petty they might scrap the whole project or shift teams, perhaps it shouldn't be leaked. I won't debate that. But that is indeed a symptom, if a small one, of a very abusive industry, and needs to be talked about. The response to a leak should not be "well, shit, we're firing you all because ONE person let something slip". It should be "oops, well, guess the public knows now, let's try to refocus how we market". This is especially notable when well known higher-ups like, say, Randy Pitchford, let information about the games they're making slip when their publishers explicitly told them not to, but they only get a slap on the wrist at the best. It really does display how a lot of the industry sees most of its workers as cogs in the machine, and only the big names get treated as human at all.
In the end, if it weren't for the industry being a shitpile, the result of a leak should merely be the developers being disappointed they couldn't reveal their art on their terms. But that disappointment is enough, to me, as an advocate for workers' rights, to be upset, because artists should get to reveal their art on their terms. And you know, if that was the normal case, I would have revulsion for leaks. As is though, I struggle to be too upset about them, because by and large it isn't even decided on anyone in the development team or related to the development team when to reveal a game. It's mandated by the corporation they toil away for. The only reason developers would worry is because of their jobs being at stake- when they shouldn't be, and it's completely on the publishers for caring more about manufactured hype than their workers.
Like, if I'm wrong, and it's in fact industry standard (i.e., not just your personal experience in one company) that development teams as a whole get the last say on when their art is revealed, by all means,
PLEASE correct me. But, as far as I can tell, it's
not like that at all except for the most pedigreed dev teams or directors/producers.
Onto this in specific situation....
I do think leaking stuff you know not from the developers but from, like, Directs or conference scripts is ultimately self-serving, though, because at best you're getting info out there a week ahead of time. It's possible to, you know, wait. At least in other leaking, there's someone on the dev team who wants the public to know. Here it's just... letting impatient people get hyped early? Shrugs. I don't think lesser of people who do it, but it just seems silly to me.
That said, it's insanely creepy and stalker-ish the lawyer sought out a person who was apparently out of country and at a place with a landline they normally aren't at. That feels very skeevy to me. Like, Sabi surely knew the NORMAL legal risks, but... that just seems to be severely overstepping bounds. And it's really fucking strange it's Nintendo doing it, as it doesn't seem to match with their current corporate structure, unless something has radically changed within it since Iwata passed. It's definitely a dark mark on them, but then, they already throw their weight around way too much, to near Disney levels, threatening normal people (not other companies) without wealth to bankrupt them over the pettiest of things, so...
I'm not understanding how video game news is a trade secret outside of technology endeavors. Thats a super stretch.
I'm not sure it would actually hold up in a court of law, but I don't think the lawyer was doing anything more than intimidation akin to a C&D. Like, who wants to go to bat for a case to set precedent when there's a chance they might lose and have to pay millions of dollars they don't have to a corporation?