Odd issue with walking/running with PS4 controller (on PS4)

So, trying to help a friend of mine out with the issues they're having.

They are playing FFXIV on a PS4. They just told me yesterday this problem has started to plague them and it is making dungeon play literally impossible. I was hoping someone could share some light on this.

When they're playing, they are having trouble maintaining a running speed. When you just move and go at your natural run, not sprinting or anything, they can't keep this up. After about 5-10 seconds of doing this, they slow to a walking speed, or stop moving completely for 2-5 seconds, and resume running, and this keeps up indefinitely.

Has anyone seen an issue like this, know what could be causing it, or what we can do to fix this? By all means it cannot be the controller. Every other game plays PERFECTLY there is never any problems with the joysticks, but running in FFXIV has become completely impossible without breaking into a walk every few seconds. This makes it impossible to do any bosses that require constant AoE dodging, so I would love some support to get them going again!

replace the control, its faulty.

Seriously. The controller has been tried and tested on 5 different games. The controller is fine. Multiple controllers have been fine. But they don't work on FFXIV for some reason. And only FFXIV.

Testing on games does not mean its fine.

The only valid test is to connect it to a pc and watch the raw range attributes.

What sort of malfunction exists that multiple PS4 controllers work completely perfectly in every way shape and form but all have the exact same issue on the exact same game. I really doubt it's a defect with the controllers themselves because it seems far, far too "convenient" that it happened on multiple controllers at the exact same time for one exact thing on a single game only.

manufacturing defect for one.

I can pull up multitudes of similar issues with other games where Launch controls are used, seems fixed in more recent controls.

Seriously. In two controllers that are not launch controllers. Bought at separate times. They both got the exact same defect on the EXACT same day that functions PERFECTLY in every way shape and form except for one extremely niche little thing in a single game that is because they both broke perfectly within seconds of each other. When they had worked for well over a month on the game with no issue just suddenly perfectly timed double defect.