You may remember seeing the Join Us trailer during the Xbox Showcase in June. The clip introduced a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers zip around on pigs, wield machine guns, and the finale hints at Cthulhu‑like tentacles looming in the distance. What didn’t make the cut was the infamous snake gun, a quirky weapon that Joe Dietsch, CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a kid’s off‑hand suggestion.
"One of the team members’ kids asked, ‘What would a snake gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a new weapon in about thirty minutes, so I built one that literally shoots snakes. The kid went nuts, and the gun stayed in the final build," Dietsch recounts. This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit of Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op—to build a 1970s‑style cult.
It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a high‑fidelity experience to emerge from a remarkably small development team. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, describes the team’s ambition as deliberately disruptive. "We told ourselves we didn’t need a hundred‑person studio; twelve talented people could pull it off," he says. The notion was met with skepticism, but the founders drew confidence from their indie‑film backgrounds, where they routinely punched far above their budgetary weight.
After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving the project a solid financial foundation. The founding trio’s Hollywood pedigree runs deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who also 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, the 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 when Dietsch began tinkering with Unreal Engine after discovering it was free to download.
"I’d loved games forever, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a couple of tiny prototypes," he explains. The simple beginnings soon evolved into a fascination with a doomsday‑cult simulation that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—a hybrid he felt could become a unique intellectual property.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming he would eventually hit a technical wall. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a partner that helped shape the next development phase.
Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had previously produced and written for film before transitioning to games in the early 2000s, contributing writing to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Wendschuh later founded several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis‑formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million.
After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a sudden call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back.
"I watched the demo Joe sent me and it blew my mind. I quit my retirement plan and jumped back in," he says. He then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, who became a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer.
With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was financing—a daunting task during the industry downturn of 2023‑2024. Initial pitches generated interest but also highlighted the difficulty of securing capital in a bearish market.
The studio eventually partnered with CAA for representation and, after a second round of pitches, closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh notes that CAA’s connections, along with veteran advisors like Schneider and Chartrand, were instrumental in convincing investors. Despite the high‑profile backing, Wolf Haus deliberately kept its staff lean—13 full‑time members at the time of writing.
Dietsch emphasizes that the small size was intentional to preserve a collaborative culture where every voice influences the creative direction. To make a large‑scale open‑world game feasible with such a compact crew, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early on. "Every system 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," he explains.
This tooling philosophy not only accelerated Join Us’s development but also laid the groundwork for future projects. Funding from Krafton and Lifelike was structured as equity, allowing the studio to self‑finance the bulk of development while using a modest amount of project finance for marketing. "Our investors want the studio to increase enterprise value, so they support our tool‑building ethos even if it slows short‑term progress," says Wendschuh. This approach gave Wolf Haus the freedom to solve problems by creating bespoke tools rather than outsourcing or cutting corners.
When asked about generative AI, Dietsch gives a clear answer: the studio does not rely on it for creative work. "We believe a game needs a human touch. Using AI to generate core content would undermine why we love making games," he says. Wendschuh adds that they only use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, not for art, design, or narrative.
Interestingly, Krafton—publicly branding itself as an "AI‑first" company—explicitly required that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. The team’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map was built manually, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, a point the developers stress as vital to the game’s identity.
Dietsch reflects on the contrast between film and game creation. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring countless approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent.
In games, an idea can be prototyped in a single morning, inserted into the engine, and instantly experienced. This immediacy, he argues, lowers the gatekeeping barrier that plagues the film industry.
"You don’t need an A‑list star or director to make a successful game; you just need a compelling experience," he says. Both mediums, however, share a common creative impulse: storytelling and immersion.
Dietsch recalls that as a child he was torn between making movies or games, a decision that ultimately hinged on a Christmas gift—a camera. He taught himself programming on a TI‑83 calculator, blending his love for both visual narratives and interactive systems. "Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. That core mission never changes," he concludes.