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 clip, robed followers charge on pigs while firing machine guns, culminating in a shot of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the final cut was the infamous snake‑gun, a quirky weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was inspired by a child’s off‑hand question.
"One of our team member’s son asked, ‘What would a snake‑gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us scale weapons in minutes, so I built a snake‑shooting gun in about half an hour. The kid was thrilled, and the weapon stayed in the game," Dietsch recalls.
This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival title where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a high‑fidelity experience to be produced by a remarkably small crew.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, sums up their ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred‑person studio; twelve people can do it.’ Most people thought we were insane." Their confidence stems from a history of punching above their weight in the indie film world, where modest budgets are the norm. After 80 pitch meetings, the team finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold stakes in Wolf Haus. 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‑wrote and co‑directed the indie films Happy Hunting and Manifest West. 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 shift to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," he explains. Despite having no formal game‑development background, Dietsch created several small titles before deciding to tackle a larger vision: a doomsday cult simulator that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, expecting to hit a technical wall at some point. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a partner studio that helped refine the concept.
Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer 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 launched several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million (about $330 million USD).
After cashing out, he bought a remote restaurant on a tiny Canadian island, intending to retire. “Then I got a call out of the blue from my old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott. He said a friend had made a video game.
I watched Joe’s demo and it blew my mind, so I came out of retirement,” Wendschuh recounts. He introduced 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. 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 in place, the next hurdle was financing—a daunting task amid an industry downturn in the summer of 2023. Initial pitches generated interest but not commitments.
The studio eventually enlisted CAA (Creative Artists Agency) in Los Angeles, leveraging the agency’s connections and the credibility of veterans like Schneider and Chartrand. By 2024, seed funding arrived from Lifelike Capital and Krafton, allowing development to continue without compromising the studio’s creative independence.
Wolf Haus deliberately kept its staff lean—13 full‑time employees at the time of writing. "We wanted a small‑team atmosphere where everyone has a voice and can touch every aspect of the creative process," says Dietsch. To make such an ambitious open‑world game feasible with a tiny crew, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early on.
"Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person. We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive map without the project collapsing under its own weight," he explains. This tooling philosophy not only supports Join Us but also lays the groundwork for future projects. The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools.
"Krafton and Lifelike’s investment funded the entire development. We’re now adding a modest amount of project finance for marketing, but the core game was built with their equity capital," Wendschuh notes.
Because the investors share the studio’s long‑term value creation goals, they encourage the team to keep building internal tools rather than outsourcing solutions. "Whenever we encounter a problem we don’t know how to solve, we build a tool for it. It may slow us down short‑term, but it lets a small team deliver a game of this scale," he adds. When asked about the role of generative AI, Dietsch gives a clear answer: none.
"We believe a human touch is essential. Turning development over to an AI would defeat why we get up in the morning," he says. Wendschuh concurs, noting that the studio only uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, never for creative work. Interestingly, Krafton, which has branded itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required that Wolf Haus not employ generative AI in its creative pipeline.
This mirrors a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio that distanced itself from the parent’s AI pivot. Both founders stress the importance of preserving jobs for voice actors and artists. The six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us is hand‑crafted, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human performers—a point of pride for a studio of their size.
Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between filmmaking and game development. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and massive budgets before a director sees the final product.
In games, an idea can be prototyped within hours and tested instantly in the engine, offering a sense of immediacy that he finds exhilarating. Wendschuh adds that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, short‑term bursts of activity followed by long periods of waiting for greenlights and distribution deals.
By contrast, games have fewer gatekeepers; a small indie can reach a global audience without A‑list talent or studio backing. Both agree that the core creative impulse is the same across mediums: to craft an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games. It came down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera," Dietsch muses.
"Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re delivering a narrative experience, and that doesn’t really change."