I actually just figured this one out, I was having similar problems. You need to go into options BEFORE you select a prison/save file, and change the control settings from "Keyboard, Mouse & Controller" to just "Keyboard & Mouse". This means that the first player can only be contolled by the keyboard, so pressing A on the controller starts splitscreen.

Hey guys!

As luigitheshyguy mentioned you need to change the controls to just 'Mouse & Keyboard' in the Help & Options screen. Once you have done that, join any prison like normal and hit A (or X on Dualshock 4) to start using the controller for Player 2

Let us know if you run into any problems

Thanks!

-Team17 Support

Yay! It worked! Thanks for the help!

No problem!

Now, back to escaping!

-Team17 Support

I just want to play the game with a controller and the game thinks I want multiplayer, can anyone help??

Originally posted by Wound-Up Zach:

I just want to play the game with a controller and the game thinks I want multiplayer, can anyone help??

I would assume its the inverse of the above mentioned process, so in your case go to options before selecting a prison or save file, and change the control settings from just "keyboard & mouse" to "keyboard, mouse and controller" this way the game should accept all keyboard/mouse inputs and controller inputs (probably only from one controller though) in order to control one player