Not much to offer, except to say I'm having the same issue. I just setup a Pi 4 with a base recalbox image. Everything is fine with 1 controller. I've even been able to get 2 controllers to work. I'm trying to expand it to 4 controllers now and its just a nightmare.

I find after a few reboots, I may get lucky and they will all work. But usually they don't. I do notice on bootup, I get many notices that a dragonrise controller has been installed. This happens on each bootup. Not sure if thats normal, should the controllers be installed each time on bootup? As mentioned earlier I feel there is conflict with how these controllers are named and being detected.

Another thing, when they do work, the player positioning is never constant. For my four player control deck, second position may be first player one time, then after a reboot another position is first player.

I edited the config text file with the usbhid.quirks entry, no luck.