"Leaks" are a big gray area and it's probably the better compromise. It's just too vague in itself if it doesn't fall under the purview of confidentiality clauses, corporate espionage, copyright, journalist and whistleblower protection plus whatever other qualifications I may forget.
In the grand scheme of things, "spoiling" a few hours beforehand marketing events for vidyagames is pretty mild.
That Sabi guy is being pretty bad at this and his recklessness might end up having consequences for his sources which is kind of a dick move.
Oh yeah don't get me wrong, but it's a pretty asshole move to leak something like the whole Keanu Reeves appearance, while leaking something like a new line of processors, etc can help with consumer decisions so they're okay in my book. In fact, I believe leaks can help a company. Example, AMD stock has been going up on rumors alone. We still don't have real benchmarks to ascertain the effectiveness of ryzen 3000, yet word of mouth is "intel killer"
it's possible they themselves are controlling the rumors because they know it will help their stock, but at the same time don't want to get into conspiracy theories where everything that ends up good for a company must be secretly part of their own plans, so yeah I get ya
I was thinking that too, "oh leaks are so harmful" but it's completely unpredictable how it impacts anything
if you want to talk about this Nintendo thing specifically, let's say 200k people will tune in and get hype without knowing anything about the conference
but imagine a scenario where it was leaked they're showing off I dunno a new open world Kid Icarus game in the Breath of the Wild engine and everyone goes "whaaat that sounds nuts I gotta watch the show" and now 250k people are tuning in