probably just a publisher, but i don’t know for sure
every game back then would get rereleased multiple times and put into compilations and so on. there wasn’t like first/second/third parties and so on, just hobbyists selling publishing rights to the games they make. and smaller publishers would pick up games a few years after release to sell at budget prices (which were like £2!).
and then in the early 90s there were the magazine tape wars, where magazine publishers would give away compilation tapes with each issue, that would have up to 7 full games on them
so you’d get like, 15 year olds buying sports cars that they couldn’t legally drive because of a game they made in their bedroom
