I have finally figured it out, thanks to a 4 year old comment thread on steam.
First, I reinstalled GHUB. I'm not sure if this is what fixed it, or my next step.
"delete the PROFILEOPTIONS in \Documents\Need for Speed Heat\settings. (Had this issue with Xbox Controller not wanting to work with NFS after instant Bluescreen) Just keep in mind Onedrive if you have it active loves to mess with this games files for some weird reason. Also the game suffers from Dual Cloud because of Steam and then Origins Cloud I also recommend disabling Origins cloud for the game on the Origin client in the game properties." -from steam comment thread
EA, you still need to fix this. It should not be up to the end user to have to diagnose and troubleshoot why their game is not working. A game should be plug and play, no ifs, ands, or buts. Find out why this happens in the first place and fix it so we don't have to.
Just one thing to add, or to highlight. I did all these steps and ended up with the same issue. The G29 was still being recongnised as a XBOX controller in the NFS Heat and Payback. Only when I re-installed the GHUB selecting the option to reset all the preferences it started working again. Not sure if it helped anything, but I've also installed the Logitech Gaming Software.
