Gotcha. I get that the newer Xbone controllers have BT, but:

1. Two of mine dont (older controllers)
2. the ones i have tried on have worse latency than Dualsense (generally only newer controllers have actual good BT latency)

Its just frustrating the 360 adapter "just works" but this newer one doesn't.

I eventually got it working under very strange conditions. I had to grab the xinput1_3.dll from the Internet and tell Bottles to set it as one of my dll overrides.

The game now boots fine- but the graphics WILL corrupt every time you load the game. Changing certain settings (like messing with the Reflection quality or the resolution) fixes the graphics.

It's a pretty annoying issue atm, but at least I can confirm this game does work on Steamdeck via Bottles.

Source for SBI censoring games?

Can anyone confirm if paying for no ads on Sync is basically the same way?

I think you might be confused, friend. The Vice City Next Gen project is standalone. Meaning it never required GTAIV to function properly. You install it and it'll work by itself. Treat it as it's own separate game.

These are my specific methods to get the game working- separate from the OP. I used Bottles instead of Lutris to sandbox the game.