Yes, that could be related with how you spawn your player manually. GameMode handles spawning of PlayerControllers and Pawns automatically, if you didn’t change it.
I am not sure if this a BP or C++ project, so I can’t really say much more, but here is the a useful documentation article about GameMode that you should read.
Not sure what kind of game you are making, but it is usually best to stay within Unreals framework. So I would advice to set up a proper GameMode and let it handle the spawning of PlayerPawn and Controller.