It's not a joke, in fact there's a perfectly good explanation for it
Due to the way USB devices are assigned their IDs by windows, you might have to remap them.
That's the necessary evil and trade-off that comes with support for more controllers. Back in IL2 it was plug and play because it only used four USB devices and you couldn't use more.
In the new sim there are pre-mapped functions by default but it also supports use of more devices. So, for them to work the ID of your stick (which is assigned by windows) must match the ID the sim's pre-mapped options default to.
The solution is to either go to the control panel and switch your joystick's ID around to find the one that matches the sim's default settings (easy to spot, your stick will start working), or remap the functions from inside the sim's options (which will have the sim detect and use the device with the ID assigned to your stick).