I am trying implement controller hotplug support with pygame 2.6.1. According to the docs, this can be achieved with JOYDEVICEADDED, JOYDEVICEREMOVED events.

Example:

import sys
import pygame
pygame.init()

from pygame.locals import JOYDEVICEADDED, JOYDEVICEREMOVED, QUIT

while True:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == QUIT:
            pygame.quit()
            sys.exit()
        if event.type == JOYDEVICEADDED:
            print(event)
        if event.type == JOYDEVICEREMOVED:
            print(event)

When running this with 1 controller attached, I first get this:

This seems fine. But when plugging another controller, the device_index is the same:

Then when unplugging the 1st controller:

When unplugging the 2nd controller:

Replugging 1st controller:

Replugging 2nd controller:

Unplugging 2nd:

Unplugging 1st:

I don't see the logic here. instance_id seems to be randomly increasing at some point, and device_id is always 0, except when having multiple controllers plugged at the very start of the program.

I think what I would need is a unique identifier for each controller, even if it's of the same type (EG PS4). In my opinion this would be the only way I could achieve proper hotplug support.

How can this be achieved?