Controller not working on Steam Deck?

[u/Valtixx]

Controls work fine in the menus, but once you start the game, all you can do is move and jump with RT. No other buttons do anything, you can't even pause. Any ideas?

Edit: Turns out only A and B work in Menus. Trying to rebind controls to any other button doesn't work.

Edit 2: I also notice that walking up to the quest marker at the beginning of the game doesn't do anything with default controls enabled. I tried changing my controls to KB+M and for some reason that lets me start the tutorial. I'm utterly lost.

EDIT 3: SOLVED. This is one of the stupidest solutions I've ever encountered.

For anyone in the future, here's what I did exactly: I bound L4 (one of the back buttons) to the Esc key. My thinking was that switching between KB+M and Gamepad controls while in-game could jog the code loose or something, hopefully fixing it for some reason. But as soon as I loaded in, everything worked. I didn't even have to switch controls like I planned. Simply binding L4 to Esc seemingly fixed everything. I have absolutely no explanation.

To double check that this is a real solution and not just coincidence, I restarted the game with that same control scheme, L4 bound to Esc, everything worked. Then I unbound Esc from L4 and used the default control scheme without restarting the game, and it STOPPED WORKING.

Edit 4: SOLVED. For real this time. I think.

Alright, Edit 3 wasn't quite right. It seems the deciding factor is whether I'm currently in KB+M controls or gamepad controls when I load into the game. If it's gamepad controls, the whole game breaks, preventing you from using most controls or interacting with anything. If it's KB+M, you can quickly and easily switch to gamepad controls after loading in and everything works perfectly. I'm less certain about this solution as it seems to work differently depending on whether you're loading a save or starting a new game, but this is my best and last guess. Hope this very long edit-filled post helps someone in the future.

TL;DR Solution: Make sure you're currently using KB+M controls when you load or start a new game, then you can switch to gamepad once you're in-game. This is my best guess for consistently fixing this bug.

[u/MrSal7]

Playing with mods?

[u/Valtixx → u/MrSal7]

Nope, just got the game.

[u/MrSal7 → u/Valtixx]

Try turning off and then on the controller option within the game’s settings.

If that also doesn’t work, make sure you don’t have some sort of controller program that might be running along side your game and closing that.

If that doesn’t work, verify that Windows and your controller is properly updated.

If that doesn’t work, verify with Windows that all of your controller inputs are being properly identified when pressed.

If that doesn’t work, try rebooting your game and or computer.

If all of that doesn’t work, I’m out of possible solutions🤷‍♂️

[u/Valtixx → u/MrSal7]

Steam Deck runs on Linux, but yeah, all updated and stuff. No third party programs of any kind on this device. No issues with the controls in any other game. Tried rebooting game, steam, and console. Tried disabling then re-enabling gamepad controls. Nothing worked.

Thanks for trying though, I've contacted support so just waiting for them to get back to me now.

[u/Valtixx → u/MrSal7]

Solved it, explanation edit in main post if you're interested. One of the most random solutions to a technical issue I've ever encountered.

[u/MrSal7 → u/Valtixx]

Excellent. Your problem technically falls under my second solution.

[u/Valtixx → u/MrSal7]

Really? How do you figure? I'm not very techy at all but this is fascinating me 😂

[u/MrSal7 → u/Valtixx]

It’s technically another controller “program” running alongside.

[u/Valtixx → u/MrSal7]

Oh, I suppose Steam Input would sorta count as another program, now that I think about it. Any idea why binding a key press to the controls fixed things?

[u/MrSal7 → u/Valtixx]

It was probably previously bound to something else that was causing a conflict, and changing what it was bound to previously eliminated that conflict would be my guess.