The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator where robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and ultimately confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One element that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous snake‑gun, a quirky weapon that originated from an off‑hand suggestion by a developer’s son. As Joe Dietsch, CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, explains, “The kid asked, ‘Can there be a snake gun?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for weapons, so within about thirty minutes I built a gun that shoots snakes.
He was amazed, and the weapon stayed in the game.” That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit of Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival title that lets players recruit followers—or fellow players in co‑op mode—to a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity experience that would traditionally require a much larger staff.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: “We set out to be disruptors. We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred people; twelve can do it.’ Most people laughed and said it was impossible.” The team’s confidence stems from a history of doing big things on shoestring budgets. Coming from indie film backgrounds, they are accustomed to punching well above their weight. After eighty pitches, the studio finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus.
The founders’ Hollywood credentials run 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 features Happy Hunting and Manifest West.
Abbott is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company started by Chris Roberts before his Star Citizen venture. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us began as a personal experiment for Dietsch in Unreal Engine.
“I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering with it after watching YouTube tutorials,” he recalls. Though he had no formal training, he built a few small prototypes before deciding to tackle something larger: a doomsday cult simulator that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics, merging his love of movies and games into a single intellectual property. He created a proof‑of‑concept demo, anticipating that at some point a technical wall would appear. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, the studio’s early incubator.
Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had begun his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s, providing writing services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. He later founded several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million. After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire.
Yet a call from his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back. “I was looking at the video game Joe had made, and it blew my mind. It convinced me to come out of retirement,” he says.
Wendschuh then recruited Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games VP now heading Raccoon Logic, as a strategic advisor, and brought in Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, formerly of Ubisoft Montreal, as chief technology officer.
With the core team in place, the next hurdle was financing. Pitching began in the summer of 2023, a period marked by an industry downturn.
Despite positive reactions to the concept, securing capital proved difficult. The studio eventually partnered with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles, which helped them refine their pitch and secure a seed round from Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024. Wendschuh notes that CAA’s representation, which also includes titles like 007: First Light, and the presence of veteran advisors were crucial in navigating the tough market.
Today, Wolf Haus operates with just thirteen full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small size is intentional: “We wanted a team where everyone has a voice, everyone touches the creative process, and the game feels like the product of a tight‑knit group.” To make such an ambitious open‑world title feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset. “Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” he explains.
The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and building the internal tools that would later allow the team to expand features across a six‑kilometre‑square map without the project collapsing under its own weight. Funding from Krafton and Lifelike has been structured as equity, allowing the studio to self‑finance development while using a modest amount of project finance for marketing. This model aligns investors’ incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the continued development of robust tools. “Whenever we encounter a problem we don’t know how to solve, we build a tool to address it.
It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables us to achieve something that would otherwise require a much larger team,” says Wendschuh. A frequent question for small‑team studios is whether they rely on generative AI to fill gaps.
Wolf Haus says unequivocally that they do not. “We believe a human touch is essential in game creation.
Using AI to replace creative decisions would defeat the purpose of why we get up every morning,” Dietsch states. Wendschuh adds that the only AI tools they employ are for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting, not for any artistic or design work.
Krafton, despite branding itself as an “AI‑first” company, also insisted that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring the stance of its subsidiary Neon Giant, which publicly distanced itself from Krafton’s AI push. Both parties share a concern that AI could erode jobs for voice actors, artists, and other creatives.
In Join Us, the entire six‑kilometre‑square world is handcrafted, and the game features roughly 15,000 voice lines recorded by human actors—a point of pride for the team. Dietsch reflects on the differences between film and game production. In film, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and extensive pre‑production.
In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours. “You can have an idea in the morning, drop it into the engine, see it instantly, and start iterating.
That immediacy is exhilarating,” he says. Wendschuh notes that while film production is front‑loaded with intense, high‑stakes set work and reliance on a handful of marquee names to secure financing, games face fewer gatekeepers. “Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without big names or distribution, success is unlikely.
With games, the barriers are lower; you don’t need an A‑list actor or director to attract an audience.” Both founders agree that the core creative impulse remains the same across mediums: delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. Dietsch recalls that as a six‑year‑old he wanted to make either movies or games, and a coin toss and a Christmas camera set his path.
He learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator, blending his love of technology with storytelling—a blend that now defines Join Us. In summary, Wolf Haus demonstrates that a small, highly skilled team equipped with purpose‑built tools, solid Hollywood pedigree, and strategic equity partners can produce a large‑scale, high‑quality game without resorting to generative AI.
Their journey from a simple Unreal Engine experiment to a fully realised cult‑simulator showcases the power of resourcefulness, cross‑industry experience, and a commitment to handcrafted creativity.