I like to have other apps like a browser easily accessible with proper window management. And most of my games are non-Steam games which allow me to easily swap between desktop and gamepad bindings easily to alt tab out.
And I've found that running KDE Plasma Wayland has no visible performance impact either. No idea why they use X11 in SteamOS.
Ah, but the really funny thing is how Gaming Mode works.
They start the gamescope wayland compositor which launches an XWayland session to run the Steam client in. Which will start gamescope to run the game, which will use a second XWayland session to actually run the game in.
It'll probably take at least two more years until they can get rid of X.
No, you cannot change the mapping of the Steam and ... buttons. They are only available to the Steam client. You cannot remap the Steam+other button combinations either.
Funnily enough when no game is running the Steam button focuses the Steam window. But that functionality is gone as soon as a game is running. Really frustrating.