Using a controller is reasonable. Not having redundancy would be insane. This article suggests they hand plenty of redundancy for surfacing.

"The Logitech F710 gamepad is a third-party wireless controller that can be used to play PC games.

It is one of the cheaper and least reliable controllers currently on the market, and suffers from a number of issues.

Numerous reviews on Amazon claim that it often suffers from connectivity issues, where the controller refuses to connect wirelessly".

https://www.the-sun.com/tech/8411660/titan-video-game-controller-titanic-missing/amp/

Idk if the same trustworthiness applies to the specific controller that was allegedly used