Fwiw I switched off of Pop onto Debian cause I was annoyed with some of Pop’s bloat and I’ve been loving it. I game pretty heavily on Debian and it works just fine. I do mostly play the same older games rather than buying new releases, however, so mileage may vary if you’re looking at cutting edge games, as driver updates can significantly boost performance in that case.
Make no mistake though, when I say ‘bloat’ I’m mostly nitpicking. Pop is a perfectly valid choice and a good option for gaming.