You may remember seeing the Join Us trailer during the Xbox Showcase back in June. The clip introduced a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation where robed followers zip around on pigs, wield machine guns, and ultimately face off against colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One detail that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous snake gun, a weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, proudly attributes to a spontaneous idea from a team member’s child. "His son asked, ‘What if there was a snake gun?’" Dietsch recalls.
"Because we built a modular gun system, I could prototype a snake‑shooting weapon in about thirty minutes. The kid went nuts, and the gun stayed in the game." That anecdote captures the chaotic, experimental spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a small group of developers to produce a visually rich, large‑scale title.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: “We wanted to be disruptors.” "We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred‑person studio; twelve talented people can do this.’ Most people laughed and called us crazy," Abbott says. Yet the team’s background in low‑budget, high‑impact filmmaking gave them confidence.
"We come from indie film, where you learn to punch far above your weight," Abbott adds. After 80 pitch meetings, Wolf Haus finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the company.
The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who later co‑founded Wolf Haus and co‑directed the indie features Happy Hunting and Manifest West with Dietsch.
Abbott is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, a production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before his move to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine. "I discovered Unreal was free to download and thought, ‘Why not give it a try?’" he explains.
Having been a lifelong gamer and movie fan, Dietsch felt the barrier to entry for creating interactive experiences was too high. He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few small prototypes, and eventually settled on a doomsday cult simulator that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He crafted a proof‑of‑concept, expecting to hit a technical wall at some point. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and introduced it to Dooma, a partner studio.
Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had a unique career path: starting as a film producer and screenwriter, he transitioned to games in the early 2000s by founding Sekretagent Productions, which provided narrative work for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, he launched 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 island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire and enjoy a quiet life.
But a call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate, Michael Abbott, changed those plans. "He said a friend had made a video game and wanted my opinion.
I looked at the demo, it blew my mind, and I came out of retirement," Wendschuh recounts. He then brought the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic (the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet), who joined as a strategic advisor. Schneider recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer. With a core team forming, the next hurdle was financing—a challenge amplified by the industry downturn of 2023‑24. The studio began pitching in summer 2023, initially reaching out on their own before signing with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles.
After a second round of pitches in 2024, they closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits CAA’s connections, noting that Derek Douglas, his long‑time agent, had previously overseen the video‑game division at William Morris. Despite the high‑profile backing, Join Us remains a truly boutique effort, built by just 13 full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the small size was intentional: "We wanted a studio where every voice matters, where everyone can touch the creative process, and where the final product feels like it came from a tightly knit group." To achieve such scope with a lean crew, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling from day one. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains.
The team built a robust toolkit that allowed features to expand across the open‑world map without causing the project to collapse under its own weight. In practice, this meant that the first year of development was split between designing gameplay concepts and constructing the underlying tools that would later enable those concepts to flourish. The equity funding model gave the studio the runway needed to perfect these tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s investments essentially self‑funded the game," says Wendschuh.
"We’re now adding a modest amount of project finance for marketing, but the core development was covered by the equity partners." One of the advantages of equity backing, according to Wendschuh, is that investors are motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value, which aligns with Wolf Haus’s philosophy of building reusable tools. "Whenever we encounter a problem we can’t solve, we build a tool to address it," he notes.
"It may slow us down short‑term, but it enables us to deliver a complex game with a tiny team." When asked about the role of generative AI—a hot topic in game development—Dietsch gave a clear answer: the studio does not use it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Hand‑crafting the experience is why we get up every morning," he says. Wendschuh adds that the only AI they employ are mundane productivity assistants for scheduling and email replies.
Interestingly, Krafton, which markets itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly discouraged Wolf Haus from incorporating generative AI into the creative pipeline. This mirrors a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio, which publicly stated it would not adopt the parent company’s AI pivot. The team’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s massive six‑kilometer‑square map and its 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by human actors. "That level of human involvement mattered to us, even as a small indie," Dietsch emphasizes.
Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between filmmaking and game development. In film, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring countless approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent.
In games, the feedback loop is immediate: "You can have an idea at breakfast and see it in the engine by lunch," he says, describing the thrill of instant iteration. Wendschuh points out that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, short‑term bursts of activity on set, whereas games allow for a more distributed, iterative process. While anyone can technically shoot a backyard movie, breaking into the film market without star power or a distribution deal is extremely difficult.
By contrast, the barriers to releasing a successful game are lower, thanks to digital distribution platforms and a relative lack of gatekeepers. Both founders agree that the core creative drive—telling stories and delivering experiences—remains the same across mediums. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games; it came down to a coin toss and maybe getting a camera for Christmas," Dietsch reminisces. He learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator, a skill that has stayed with him throughout his career.
"Whether it’s a film or a game, you’re crafting an experience, a narrative, and engaging an audience. That essence never changes."