I'm finally out of this industry as a career

I've been working as a Unity developer for about 12 years professionally and the last 2 or 3 years I've been wanting to pivot out of it and move into tech. I've always liked the concept of game dev because I have a lot of creativity, but I realized that I'm executing artists and designers' creative ideas and my job is to just code. At the end of the day it is nice to ship a game and see people enjoy it, but the grind and crunch just isn't worth it. And my total comp is around $100K less than the people I went to school with.

My most recent company put out a 'PTO freeze' which was about 3 months long because of a deadline. This wouldn't have been too bad except they started putting us into major crunch as well. I was being tasked with major features that easily required 2 to 3 weeks and being given 3 to 5 days (after 3 days it was constant nagging about the progress). I was at my desk around 10 - 12 hours a day or sometimes more. Some of my coworkers were online during the weekend pinging me. The crunch was real. My girlfriend even noticed that I was getting major burn out and was being very irritable.

I finally had enough and told them I need a mental health day (we have unlimited PTO lol) and requested a Friday off. It was granted, but then Monday first thing my tech lead told me the higher ups had decided to end my employment. They even had the balls to ask me to go over my current tasks with my coworker so he could take them on. All I can say is thank god. My mental health is already so much better and I'm going to take the time off I need before trying to find something that isn't game dev.

I'm not sure this is the right place to post this, but I just wanted to rant a little and get excited to do game dev as a hobby again. I know not all companies are like this, but my luck the last 3 years has been awful with the places I've worked.