The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation. In the preview, robed followers charge on pig‑mounted platforms, firing an arsenal of weapons before the screen cuts to a massive, Cthulhu‑like mass of tentacles. One element that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous "snake gun," a quirky weapon that has become a hallmark of the game. According to Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, the idea sprang from a child’s imagination.
"One of our team member’s son asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a modular weapon system that let us prototype a new gun in under thirty minutes. I built it on the spot, and his reaction was priceless. It stuck around because it was just that fun," Dietsch recalls.
This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox where players can amass followers or invite friends into a 1970s‑style cult. The game’s design philosophy is equally unorthodox, relying heavily on bespoke tools that let a tiny crew punch far above its weight. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors. While everyone assumed you need a hundred‑person studio to produce a high‑fidelity title, we believed twelve could do it.
People laughed, but we proved them wrong." Their confidence stems from a background in low‑budget indie filmmaking, where resourcefulness is a daily requirement. The studio endured eighty pitch meetings before securing equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold stakes in Wolf Haus. The founding trio carries deep roots in Hollywood.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of actor‑director Mel Gibson, and the two 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 his transition to the Star Citizen universe. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
This cinematic pedigree informs the studio’s storytelling sensibility, blending grindhouse aesthetics with interactive gameplay. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s idle experiments in Unreal Engine. "Unreal is free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt blocked from actually creating one," he explains. He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, eventually crafting a series of small prototypes.
The concept that persisted was a doomsday cult simulator that merged survival mechanics with the over‑the‑top flair of grindhouse cinema. He built a proof‑of‑concept, anticipating that technical hurdles would eventually force him to abandon the idea. Instead, the demo impressed Abbott, who then presented it to Dooma, a partner studio. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, entered the picture after a career that straddles film and interactive media.
He began as a producer and screenwriter before founding Sekretagent Productions, which supplied narrative work for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. In the 2010s he launched several tech ventures, most notably Ebbu, a cannabis‑formulation company sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million).
After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a sudden call from his former Hollywood‑Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, lured him back into game development. "I watched the demo Joe sent me, and it blew my mind.
It was the spark that pulled me out of retirement," he says. Wendschuh recruited Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros.
Games vice president now heading Raccoon Logic, as a strategic advisor. Schneider, in turn, brought on Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran programmer from Ubisoft Montreal, to serve as chief technology officer. With this core assembled, the studio turned its focus to financing.
The market downturn of 2023 made fundraising difficult, but the team persisted, eventually signing with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and securing seed capital from Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024. The partnership with CAA proved pivotal. Their agent Derek Douglas, who had represented Wendschuh during his twelve‑year game‑development career and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris, helped open doors to investors and industry contacts. Despite the heavyweight representation, Wolf Haus kept its staff lean—thirteen full‑time employees at most.
"We built the game with a clear sense of scope and deliberately kept the team small so everyone could have a voice and directly influence the creative direction," Dietsch notes. A cornerstone of their ability to deliver a large‑scale, high‑quality experience with so few people is the extensive toolset they built early on.
"Every system in the game needed to be scalable and debuggable by a single developer," Dietsch explains. The studio invested heavily in creating modular pipelines, automated testing frameworks, and in‑engine editors that let designers iterate without waiting on programmers.
This upfront tooling not only prevented the project from collapsing under its own complexity but also laid the groundwork for future titles. Funding from Krafton and Lifelike was structured as equity, allowing Wolf Haus to self‑finance development while retaining creative control. "Our investors are motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they encourage us to build robust tools rather than cut corners," Wendschuh says.
The studio even allocated a modest portion of the budget to project finance for marketing, but the core development remained fully covered by the equity partners. When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in the industry—both Dietsch and Wendschuh were unequivocal: the studio does not rely on AI for creative work.
"We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate assets would undermine why we love making games," Dietsh states.
Wendschuh adds that the only AI tools they employ are mundane productivity assistants for scheduling and email replies. Interestingly, Krafton, which has publicly branded itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in its creative pipeline. This stance mirrors that of Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio that publicly denied using AI for game content. The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio.
The six‑kilometre‑square map of Join Us was built entirely by hand, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices. "Even as a small indie, we felt it was crucial to preserve the authenticity of performance," Dietsch says.
Dietsch also reflects on the differences between film and games as creative mediums. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and massive budgets before a director sees it on set. By contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, inserted into the engine, and instantly visualised.
This immediacy fuels rapid iteration and keeps the creative process exciting. Wendschuh notes that while film production is front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations for star talent, game development faces far fewer gatekeepers.
"You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to launch a successful game," he observes, highlighting the democratising power of interactive media. Both men agree that the core impulse behind both crafts is storytelling. "Whether you’re making a movie or a game, you’re trying to give someone an experience, tell a story, and engage them," Dietsch concludes. Their journey—from Hollywood film sets and cannabis ventures to a 12‑person studio building a cult‑themed open‑world sandbox—illustrates how diverse backgrounds can converge to produce something truly original, all while sidestepping the hype around generative AI and proving that a small, focused team can achieve big ambitions.