I'm having a similar issue. Though not quite as bad as it sounds for you. It recognizes the deck controls and ps4 controllers, but won't let me assign anything other than the deck controls for player 1. So if I want to play on the TV with my daughter I have to use the deck like a wired controller. I also would love to see a solution to this.

So the only thing I found that let me play two player docked without using steam deck gamepad consistently is using my 8bitdo pro controller and ps5 controller the pro controller always wants to be first player no matter what for some reason and the ps5 controller shows up as an Xbox controller in game but it works and I think I also disabled steam input

I have this problem on a regular "pc" which uses steam big picture. There is always a "keyboard" player in first player even though I only have controllers plugged in. I haven't figured out a way around this and it prevents playing unless I actually plug in a keyboard as player one. Very frustrating because this has not always been the case. My kids keep demanding we play but we just cannot since we just use this as a living room console.

Originally posted by Tor.sh:

I have this problem on a regular "pc" which uses steam big picture. There is always a "keyboard" player in first player even though I only have controllers plugged in. I haven't figured out a way around this and it prevents playing unless I actually plug in a keyboard as player one. Very frustrating because this has not always been the case. My kids keep demanding we play but we just cannot since we just use this as a living room console.

Currently seeing this! Anyway around this?

Same for me. After some update first player is always keyboard on Steamdeck. Game becomes unplayable.

Hello. Same for me too.

same issue here