Since you mention "Green Pepper" et al: I found an interesting article from 2010.
Warning: massive wall of text incoming:

(German article from 2010 – translated with DeepL) – Part I

A look behind the scenes:
Budget Games Report
Even if it may seem strange to the Steam-using or Day-1-full-price-buying dedicated gamer: the budget market is reaching huge numbers, be it with "casual simulations" released right away for under 30 Euros, or with typical second and third party marketing à la SoftwarePyramide. But the budget market has changed...

In most markets, there are two metrics for measuring the success of products: revenue and units sold.
Of course, this also applies to the games trade. There, according to sales figures, "Activision Blizzard" and "Electronic Arts" are the top dogs, followed by a group of large publishers such as "Ubisoft", "Square-Enix", "Koch Media" and various others. Everyone knows that! However, if you look at the market of secondary marketing and mid- and low-price first releases, the usual order suddenly shuffles. "Electronic Arts" is still in the lead with a market share of about 20%, but after that comes the combination "Rondomedia/Astragon" (both companies are closely connected) with a market share of about 10% -- and that's without the budget series "Ubisoft Exclusive", which is distributed by "Rondomedia". Fighting for 3rd and 4th place, month after month, with about 7 to 8% share each, are "Activision Blizzard" and "Ubisoft". Very far ahead would also land "ak tronic", if their SoftwarePyramide games were not attributed to the respective publishers, but to "ak tronic" itself.

In the past, the budget market tended to be the little ugly duckling in the games market. But the life cycle of a PC or console game is turning faster and faster. There isn't a single title that would hit its MSRP anywhere even on the first day of retail. Most recently, "Starcraft 2" was a prominent example of this: It was actually supposed to cost an extra-expensive 59.95 Euros, but "Amazon" and "Media Markt / Saturn" undercut each other down to 38.99 Euros. In the meantime, the price has "recovered" to around 44 Euros.
However, the adjustment after the full price phase is also faster and faster, often after just a few weeks, except for absolute top titles.
What has also changed in the last few years: The path from mid-price (approx. 20 to 35 Euros) to low-price (under 20 Euros) leads virtually without detours to 9.99 Euros, and hardly any market participants still rely on the intermediate stage of 14.99 Euros. Below 9.99 Euros, the "flogging" slowly begins, whether under the "Green Pepper" flag, during promotions in supermarkets, or for less than 1 Euro on booklet data carriers (converted to the number of copies sold).

Casual games make up for video game declines

Second- and third-party (as well as budget-first) releases have always been dominated by the PC, but consoles have also seen more and more bugdet re-releases in recent years, especially the DS and PS2. And even the "big" consoles have their "exclusive", "platinum" or "premium" series. In 2010, however, console games in Germany have been declining overall so far, including secondary marketing. For Wii and DS titles in particular, manufacturers are reporting declines of up to 35 percent; the PS2 bugdet market is now virtually in "ak tronic's" hands alone.

According to André Franzmann, managing director of "Rondomedia", it will be difficult to match last year's figures this year: The declining console budget releases can be partially offset by increases in another field. This is because more and more releases from "Rondomedia" and "Astragon" are taking place in the casual sector, with titles from "MumboJumbo", "Popcap", "Bigfish" and "iWin". Their games are free to play on the Internet, but only in trial versions - those who are "hooked" must either purchase them digitally or use them as part of a subscription. That's why, says Franzmann, there's a great willingness among casual gamers to buy games for 9.99 Euros in stores: "They'd rather buy individual games than commit to a provider." Competitors such as Hamburg-based "Intenium" or Ulm-based "S.A.D" are also below the magic 10-Euro mark with their casual games.

Budget games with large print runs

Especially the SoftwarePyramide, surely known to every reader from the retail trade, is a true unit number monster. "Each pyramid turns over about four times a year," reveals "ak- tronic" boss Peter Schroer, meaning that it sells its entire range four times in arithmetical terms. "A typical 36-unit pyramid corresponds to annual sales of around 50,000 Euros per merchandise carrier. The initial print run per title is mostly 30,000 units for the pyramid, and normally sells between 50,000 and 100,000 copies." The "Green Pepper" label, he said, is then good for another 20,000 to 30,000 units, at a retail price of 7 to 8 Euros. (Console budget games are well above that, with most manufacturers charging around 20 Euros for them.)

Isn't the budget market simply a mirror image of the full-price market?

Dietmar Tönges explains that one can already speak of a rule of thumb: "Budget units equal full-price units. However, the distribution and sales manager at "Koch Media" sees clear outliers in both directions. As an example of a disproportionately large full-price success, he cites "Gothic 3", whose "Hammerpreis" unit sales have so far only reached about half of that. No wonder, thinks the die-hard computer gamer -- "Gothic 3" was characterized by a particularly high bug density along with design flaws, most gamers were warned at the latest at the time of the budget phase. On the other hand, "Koch Media" had a lot of reason to be happy, because the adventure game "Geheimakte Tunguska" in the "Hammerpreis" version sold about twice as well as the already quite successful full price game.

Dietmar Tönges calls his "Hammerpreis" series a top title when it sells 100,000 copies or more. In general, he says, the overall level of the PC platform has also declined in the budget segment: "Titles that crack the 100,000 mark have become rarer, and very few games break the 200,000 sound barrier." That was different just a few years ago.

(German article from 2010 – translated with DeepL) – Part II

The book trade as role model

"The idea behind the SoftwarePyramide originally came from the book trade," elaborates Peter Schroer of "ak tronic". "However, we don't randomly bring any cheap games, but real classics." The CDs are always newly produced for the pyramid, and in 2010 the assortment consists of 150 PC and 200 console titles (priced at 20 to 22 Euros instead of 9.99 Euros). The latter are divided into 60 PS2, 60 Wii, 50 DS and 30 PS3 titles. This assortment is updated monthly, and for PC alone, 15 titles are exchanged each time: what works stays in, what doesn't work so well gets kicked out.

Peter Schroer tries to cover all genres in the assortment: "That's an advantage over competitors who can often only bring the selection of individual manufacturers or their own products as a budget." Dietmar Tönges of "Koch Media" counters: "The packaging form speaks for our "Hammerpreis" series; we only have the DVD format, which has a more valuable effect on the end customer. And we pay attention to quality: there are always exactly 21 titles in the "Hammerpreis" Tower. The competition has a much wider range, so there are sometimes weaker titles there."

But who actually fills the towers and pyramids? Contrary to popular belief, it's not the retailer or electronics wholesale department manager, but the supplier itself. "Koch Media" has a two-pronged approach to field sales: On the one hand, around 30 field sales staff regularly visit customers in German-speaking countries. In addition, some of the customers are looked after by a rack-jobbing team of around 60, who maintain the product range and actively re-order. The reported figures and reorders are then summarized at headquarters and changes to the product range are derived from them.

For example, the very good 2009 western game "Call of Juarez - Bound in Blood" has just been released in the "Ubisoft Exclusive" series (up to €19.99) distributed by André Franzmann.
However, unlike a few years ago, "Ubisoft Exclusive" no longer accounts for about half of "Rondomedia's" sales, but only about 10 percent. The company has transformed itself from a secondary marketer to a primary marketer: 90 percent of titles at "Rondomedia" and "Astragon" now come from simulations, casual games, children's software and applications. The share of full-price games such as "Rick'n Roll" or "German Truck Simulator" is relatively low, however, with first releases below 30 Euros or even less than 10 Euros still predominating.

Calculation with low margins

With prices usually around 10 Euros, budget games have to make money through the masses, because the lower manufacturing costs are offset by retail margins, distribution costs and purchase prices to the publisher or license fees to the developer. If the return rate for a product is higher than calculated, the budget manufacturer usually loses money. Peter Schroer sees a clear connection between the marketing phases: "Thanks to Media Control, we know for each title how much it sold as full and mid-price, and that is then almost always the relation for us." At "ak tronic", around 25 percent of the 10 Euros per game goes to retailers and a not inconsiderable portion to the manufacturer.

Dietmar Tönges also attests to a unit correlation between budget and initial marketing. "Normally, if a title has not made it to profitability in initial marketing, it will not make it through budget marketing either. Then it's all about damage limitation." Of course, see the example of "Gothic 3" described above: If a full-price title acquires a bad reputation, it will also stick to the cheaper budget version.

Like his colleagues, André Franzmann sees that very popular titles also do well as "Ubisoft exclusives". At "Rondomedia", the 15.99 Euro to 19.99 Euro retail price includes about 1 Euro for advertising together with retailers and 50 Cents for the company's own advertising measures. André Franzmann explains: "Of course, our return on investment is higher with our own games like „The Planner 4“ than with a secondary marketing series, where we have to pay the manufacturer a fairly high guarantee.

Does the "budget buyer" per se exist at all?

According to Dietmar Tönges, the budget customer is not fundamentally different from the full-price buyer: "The student simply often has to wait until he can afford a game, but that doesn't make him a casual gamer. The real geeks, however, don't want to wait, so they usually pay the full price." André Franzmann sees a very considered attitude among buyers: "Even if a game has only received a high 70 rating in trade magazines, it's often an interesting title for us because the customer says to himself: I won't pay 30 Euros or 50 Euros for it, but I will pay 15 Euros." However, he immediately puts it into perspective: "If a title gets a moderate to poor rating, consumers don't forget that, then it won't run even at the reduced price."

Peter Schroer doesn't want to miss out on core gamers either: "Regular gamers are clearly among our customers. They like to buy a predecessor afterwards to complete their collection. Or pirated copies are subsequently legalized."

In the games industry, the budget market is sometimes accused of ruining prices and getting gamers used to bargains. Peter Schroer doesn't want to hear anything about that: "If we didn't exist, only marginally more people would buy at full price. We remain an important part of the value chain for publishers!"
Quite apart from that: It's the publishers themselves who release their games for secondary or third-party marketing."

Or there was price fixing in your countries like there was with games consoles. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/31/business/europe-fines-nintendo-147-million-for-price-fixing.html

and now most of that is monetised now for a quick buck, spamming the games industry with low quality products.

That could of course be, but I don't think so. The PC games market was always by far more open than the console market, no one had exclusive rights to anything.

I have no doubt that Nintendo tried to influence the market. If you find an old PS or Sega or XBox in your basement, it's no big deal. But on the retro market you will always get good prices for Nintendo hardware and games.

The UK versions for me were always a viable option, because they were produced by modern standards (DVD, not CD like in the US versions), were in english or often multilingual and didn't have that ugly USK logo like german editions. That they were cheaper than in the rest of Europe was great for me. I bought a lot on play.com back then and a different shop which's name I forgot, they often also offered US versions, which sometimes I bought if they had a good looking box.

Btw, back then there also existed some Austrian game versions - uncensored german versions only for Austria, it was crazy. In a city right between Germany and our border was a shop which was specialized in getting US and uncensored versions.
For us here it was not always easy to get our hands on german or - in my case - english versions, the stores in our region often only had the italian stuff. I lived for a while in Munich, where I knew a good shop, brought home bags full of games for me and friends (I remember standing in line for one and a half hours waiting for a Half Life mission disk to be delivered to that shop in Munich and it wasn't even for me). After I left Munich, an Austrian between Germany and our border was a ok replacement, it specialized on getting uncenrored versions. But I also looked for alternatives and so I ended up on play.com.

Play-Asia ?. There was also another online shop back then (whose name escapes me) that sold third-party hardware (among other things) mainly for game consoles (think: GBA expansion cards, rom rippers etc), the likes of which ended up Nintendo getting them shut down (about 15/20 years ago, I think). I bought my GBA Super Card SD from them back then, and still have it...

No, that wasn't it, there was no "play" in the name. It's not so important anyway.

I was never into consoles, I'm a Amiga child. I bought the XBox Classic for Spider-man 2 basically. By now I have a few consoles, but the PC is still is my main platform.
I did get a Evercade however (handheld + TV version) and a couple of their collections.

Ok, no worries, just thought I'd have a guess at it.

Me too, and still have my A1200, though my A500+ and CD32 are long gone...

Perhaps as the saying goes you 'get what you pay for.' ;)

Ouch!, that sounds a very dark day. Such classic hardware too. My A1200 used to have an Apollo 040/40 with 16 MB fast-ram trap-door accelerator card fitted, with a beefed up (heavy) power supply to power it, a 1GB Internal hard disk and a load of floppy disk and CD-Rom based software for it. All have sadly gone now, because of lack of space, and only literally have just the A1200 unit in my possession, which is currently in storage. I only really keep it around because I can't force myself to sell it, as it mean a great deal to me, and can't use it, as it takes up too much space (that I don't have) when in use. As sad as it is to say, emulation is so much more convenient and space efficient than having multiple hardware systems creating clutter, and what better emulation machine, than the PC I'm currently using ?.

Yeah, I know. I was just kidding btw.