VKB-SIM

I got my Standard to Premium Kosmosima kit in from VKB today (big thanks for letting me buy the kit!) and I have successfully installed the upgraded parts. And after a liberal application of Nyogel, my VKB sticks are working really well! I did have to file some plastic burrs off some of the parts to get them to mesh better. Whatever plastic they make these out of its tough stuff!

Now I'm digging into the profiling software and have a question:
Why does the default profile assign buttons to the hats rather than set them as hats?

I suspect that it's something to do with compatibility, but I'm sure there is a more specific answer that I can get. Windows can see up to four hats, and upon experimentation, windows can see hats 2-4 just fine. I'd like to program the hats to show up as actual hats, then shift to buttons as a shift state. I figured out how to do all of this, but if there is some "here's why hats above one is a bad idea", I'd love to hear it.

Already hit one snag, Win 10 doesn't seem to detect Hat4 presses.

So now you know )) Thing is there are still lots of modern games that won't recognize more than 1 or 2 HATs or more than 32 buttons on a joystick.
The firmware is coming barebone by default so could fit in most games.