8 gamepads working but max 4 XBox gamepads

[supersmo]

According to the latest changelog you enabled SteamInput by default. SteamInput turns all controllers into virtual XBox controllers. While this fixes compatibility issues with odd controllers this also limits the number of controllers the game can use to 4 because you are accessing the XBox controllers via the XInput API which has this limitation.

To be clear:
IF Steam Input controller support is enabled:
Max 4 gamepads, no matter what kind since this turns them into PS4 controllers.

IF Steam Input controller support is disabled the game works with:
8 PS4 gamepads
Max 4 XBox controllers + 4 PS4 Controllers.

This in itself is great and users with more than 4 XBox controllers can get around this limit by buying reWASD to turn their XBOX controllers into virtual PS4 controllers. I have confirmed that it's possible to use 8 XBox controllers this way.

If you want to get 8 XBox controllers to work out of the box for windows the best option is to use an input library that supports Windows.Gaming.Input API. This API allows for more than 4 XBox controllers to work and also works in combination with SteamInput enabled to get all odd controllers to work too. The only limitation is that the Windows OS needs to be newer than Windows 8.1 .

Another option is to look into reading the controller input via the SteamInput API.

In both the Windows.Gaming.Input and SteamInput API options with Steam Input Controller support enabled I believe users with more than 4 XBox controllers need to install the "Xbox Extended Feature Support Driver" from within Steam->Settings->Controller.

I don't have experience with GODOT so don't know the convenient options for this engine but please read what I have written on this topic here as it has helped many developers add support for more than 4 XBox controllers to their games.

If a dev sees this post, please read this: Instructions to developers to support more than 4 gamepads