Before you read, keep in mind I’m not a lawyer.
I have couple questions that I asked support but didn’t get any answer yet.
Yeah support seems to be quite busy lately. I would suggest to wait 4-5 business days maximum (if you haven’t already).
I’ve checked guidelines and other topics to see if we can able to publish RetroArch on Itch.io and so far I didn’t see anything that hold us
As far as I’m aware, Itch is pretty open and friendly to developers, so any project is welcome. Unless you are worried about the blurry line between emulators and piracy? I doubt emulators have any issues here, unless they also provide commercial games for free as well.
Can we publish RetroArch at Itch.io?
Same as above.
We have Online Updater in RetroArch which help us to download some of assets and Cores from our buildbot, can it be still there or there is no chance to have in-software updater? If this case we can remove it like we did in Steam version.
I believe automatic updaters are discouraged here on Itch. It’s better to provide a project that works as-is once downloaded. If you use the tool “butler”, you can update files in such a way, that users are able to update through the Itch app, without re-downloading the whole project every time.
If we have to remove Online Updater, we have to provide Cores in release build. Since I didn’t see Sub-product or DLC page in Itch.io and our Cores have different Licencese from LGPL to GPLv3. So in this case should we go with different store page for each core as Game Asset or is there anything we can do about it.
I’m not sure what you mean by “Cores”. Steam has sub-products as you mentioned, but on Itch.io you can create individual project pages for each sub-product, and reference each other that way.
We also have Netplay which is a mechanism that allows multiplayer over a network. It’s not link cable emulation though. It’s same system multiplayer and host needs to forward the ports properly. Is it okay to have it there?
I’m not familiar with Netplay. Opening ports is tricky, and could lead to exposing the user to vulnerabilities. In general Itch.io has no issue with multiplayer games, but I’m not sure of Netplay’s implemenation, and if it’s considered safe. If it is, I don’t see any issue with it being uploaded here.
Also we are requesting retroarch.itch.io and libretro.itch.io
If these usernames are not available, only support can help with what are the available options. I’m not sure if usernames are subject to DMCAs.
Also worth mentioning that licenses shouldn’t be a problem, even GPL licenses.
Sorry I couldn’t answer everything you mentioned, hope this information helps.