Gamescope is developed by Valve and none of these parameters gives you unfair competitive advantage. I’ve used gamescope for many years and never had an issue.

Gamescope does support Reshade effects, and I would not encourage enabling those.

Thanks. I’ll update the post.

I have edited my original title.

Sorry. Counter strike. I edited my original title.

Thanks for the input. I’ve expanded on this point and tried to explain how it works in my original post.

Without adaptive sync is still better than native resolution without gamescope, so I’m not sure why you’re so dismissive. I’m just trying to share a list of tweaks that made the experience better.

Adaptive sync + downscaled resolution with black bars + -noreflex + sane graphics settings in CS

I think this is incorrect. I suspect it is because I am using a variable refresh rate display (LG 38GN950P). According to arch docs

If your monitor supports it, enable variable refresh rate by passing the --adaptive-sync flag

Also: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/207322/what-does-vsync-mean-on-a-variable-refresh-rate-monitor

However, I am forcing gamescope to downscale to play at a lower resolution (without the game looking like a blurry mess)

Different tools for different purposes

Because not every movie and episode that I want to watch is already released. Radarr/sonarr lets me subscribe and downlod the correct movie/episode when available in the quality profile that I want.

Also automatically sorting everything in a useful structure when I share my plex libraries with friends and family.

You guys are not using radarr/sonarr?

Correct. But a VPN provider can also build a profile on that metadata, and transparency is often lacking in the VPN business. I live in a country with fairly good privacy laws for now and much prefer my ISP to have my metadata than someone else.

I trust my ISP more than a random VPN provider. I use HTTPS for everything anyways.