As pointed out in This Week in GNOME, there's been some continued work on Variable Rate Refresh for the GNOME desktop. The VRR setting within GNOME Settings continues to be iterated on as the developers iron out how they'd like to present the Variable Rate Refresh setting for users. The developers have been discussing how to best present the option as to avoid confusion as well as how it makes the most technical sense as far as the option goes.
The lack of VRR in GNOME is what had me change to KDE. I prefer GNOME in many ways, but I was tired of having to use the vrr patches to keep the functionality.
I thought its an entire different desktop. Especially itd not possible to run gamescope while a X11 Desktop is running so I guess you are wrong with "bypassing". Its just switching to gamescope. Its a Wayland compositor. It does even less than a Window Manager (is this right?)
I assume as this is a Gaming mode, its purpose is not to avoid waiting for features. But close the entire desktop which may use up to 1GB RAM and a by of CPU. Which definetly impacts the game by some fraction. Doesnt matter how tiny, its just what gaming modes are having as focus I assume.
The next thing I would never see on a desktop is FSR which gamescope has.
I used it previously. I never had crashes because of it, but it would mean I would have to wait for the aur packages to be updated before I could upgrade to the next iteration of GNOME.