I noticed that when I'm using a controller for both RE1 and RE2, once the controller accidentally disconnects, it won't work anymore even if you reconnect it, unless you quit the game and start it up again. I tried this out with other retro GOG games to see if this is a common thing, and it is. Does someone knows a solution for this? Did this happened to you too? I can continue to play it with a keyboard, so it's not that big of a problem, but it's still very inconvenient.

Similar issue, even I prefer Keyboard, but sometimes want to play with Controller, but can't trust it.

When controller disconnects while playing RE1 or RE2 - game freezes for few seconds and then game forced closes. Have to run game again and progress is lost.

At least you guys can get your controller to work. Both RE1 & RE2 don't recognize mine even after relaunching the game.

Question, are either of you launching through GOG Galaxy? I am not. Wondering that is an issue.

EDIT: Alright, so my Xbox controller works but my Astro C40 does not. Annoying.

To me the game doesn't freeze or crashes at all. It works perfectly, it's just that the controller doesn't work anymore unless I quit, and boot the game up again. I'm playing all of my GOG games through the Galaxy launcher by the way. Do games even have cloud saves without the launcher?

On Steam, even if your controller gets unplugged, if you plug it back it will work immediately. Same happens if you first plug it after you start a game. On GOG your controller only works if you plug it in before you start up a game, and it never gets unplugged even for a moment. This is something the GOG team should fix because this controller support for these games are flawed. It's very inconvenient that you need to be careful if your controller is plugged to a USB cable.

Yeah I just ran into the same issue where my controller disconnected for a second and even after reconnecting it didn't work, making me worry that I'd have to restart my game.

Solution:
Tab out of the game then disconnect your controller and then reconnect it. Give it a few seconds to make sure its connected and tab back in.

I use to play on an emulator called ePSXe that would play ps1 games, and it had the same issue, however there I noticed when you tabbed out and back in it reconnected the controller without having to restart. Im glad it still works here, it did take me a few tries but its better than restarting.

What exactly do you mean by tab out? Press the windows key? I would still prefer it if GOG would just fix this problem, and make the controller support work as it should work. If Steam can do it, why can't they?

press Alt + Tab to change your current tab. This "freezes" the game while it is minimized. If you reconnect your controller while the game is minimized there is a chance that the controller will work again once you unminimize the game, but I've had inconsistent results. So far I've only got it to reconnect twice. Still its worth a shot.
I was hoping they would fix this ever since Resident Evil 1 was released here a while ago. Hopefully they fix this soon or someone makes a fix for it, but otherwise we just gotta work with what we have.

Also, I don't know if you tried this but sometimes my cable for my ps5 controller gets really sensitive to being moved. What I did was I would try to clean out the charging port on my controller with canned air and that would help with connectivity for a bit. I'm no expert, but I figure that dust sometimes makes connection between the controller and the cable difficult