The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator. In the teaser, robed followers zip around on pig‑back rides, brandishing machine guns before the screen erupts into an image of massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the cut was the infamous snake gun, a weapon that, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—originated from a child’s off‑hand suggestion.
"One of our team member’s son asked, ‘What if there’s a snake gun?’" Dietsch recalls. "Because we built a modular weapon system, I could prototype a snake‑shooting gun in roughly thirty minutes. The kid was thrilled, and the gun stayed in the final build." That anecdote captures the chaotic, sandbox‑style gameplay Join Us promises: an open‑world survival experience where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑inspired cult.
It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a tiny crew to craft a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their philosophy: “We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build this with twelve people, and they laughed. We proved them wrong.” The team’s confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on modest budgets.
“We come from indie film,” Abbott explains, “so we’re used to punching well above our weight.” After 80 pitches, Wolf Haus finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving the studio the financial runway it needed. The founders’ Hollywood connections run deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson—and the two later co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie features Happy Hunting and Manifest West.
Abbott is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company founded by Chris Roberts before he moved on to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced titles such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us began as a side project for Dietsch, who was tinkering with Unreal Engine after discovering it could be downloaded for free. “I’d loved games for as long as I’d watched movies, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge,” he says.
He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, built a few small prototypes, and eventually settled on a doomsday cult simulator that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. The proof‑of‑concept was deliberately built to test the limits of the studio’s technology.
"I assumed I’d hit a wall at some point—some technical hurdle that would prove the idea unfeasible," Dietsch admits. He showed the demo to Abbott, who then introduced it to Dooma, a production partner. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, entered the picture after a varied career that spanned film production, screenwriting, and video‑game writing.
In the early 2000s he founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, he built several tech ventures, including the cannabis‑formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote restaurant on a tiny Canadian island, planning a quiet retirement.
Yet a call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into game development. "I watched the demo Joe sent and it blew my mind," Wendschuh says. He then brought the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games VP now heading Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet.
Schneider joined as a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer. With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was funding—an especially tough task during the industry downturn of 2023‑24.
The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, receiving positive but cautious reactions. After enlisting CAA (Creative Artists Agency) as representation and refining their pitch, they secured seed financing from Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024. Wendschuh credits CAA’s connections, noting that the agency also represents titles like 007: First Light, and that veteran agents such as Derek Douglas (who once headed the video‑game department at William Morris) helped open doors.
Despite the high‑profile backing, Wolf Haus has kept its headcount deliberately low—13 full‑time staff members at the time of writing. "We entered the project knowing exactly what we wanted to achieve," says Dietsch, "and we wanted a small‑team culture where everyone’s voice matters and everyone can touch the creative side." To make a sprawling open‑world game feasible with such a lean crew, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from day one. "Any system in the game has to be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and building the internal toolset that would later allow those ideas to scale across a six‑kilometre‑square map without collapsing under their own weight.
The equity model with Krafton and Lifelike also gave Wolf Haus the breathing room to perfect those tools. "The money we received was used to self‑fund the game," Wendschuh notes. "We’re now only taking on a modest amount of project finance for marketing.
The core development was entirely covered by our investors, who share our goal of increasing the studio’s enterprise value." When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in game development—both Dietsch and Wendschuh were unequivocal: the studio does not rely on AI for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential," Dietsch says.
"We have a few AI subscriptions for mundane tasks like calendar management, but none of our art, design, or narrative is generated by AI." Krafton, despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company, actually required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, echoing a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. Wendschuh emphasizes that the studio’s ethos respects creative professionals, noting that AI could threaten jobs for voice actors and artists. Accordingly, every inch of Join Us’s six‑kilometre‑square world is handcrafted, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human performers. Dietsch reflects on the differences between filmmaking and game development, highlighting the immediacy of the latter.
In film, a concept can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and location scouting before a single frame is shot. In contrast, a game idea can be prototyped within hours: "You can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly. That immediacy is intoxicating." Wendschuh adds that movies are front‑loaded with high‑stakes logistics—securing A‑list talent, convincing studios, and navigating distribution channels—whereas games face far fewer gatekeepers.
"Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard film, but without big names or a distribution deal, it’s unlikely to break out. With games, the barrier is lower; you don’t need a Hollywood star to attract players." Both founders agree that the core creative impulse is the same across mediums: delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience.
"When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games—it came down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas," Dietsch says, recalling his early programming days on a TI‑83 calculator. "Whether it’s a film or a game, you’re crafting an experience and a narrative, and that hasn’t changed."