The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, giving viewers a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator. In the clip, robed cultists ride on pigs while firing machine guns, culminating in a dramatic reveal of massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One detail that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous “snake gun,” a weapon that originated from a spontaneous idea by a team member’s child.
Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, recalls the moment vividly: “My colleague’s son asked if we could make a gun that shoots snakes. Because we had built a flexible weapon‑creation tool, I was able to prototype a snake‑shooting gun in roughly thirty minutes.
The kid was thrilled, and the weapon stayed in the game.” That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a tiny team to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff. Michael Abbott, the studio’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: “We set out to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build a AAA‑ish experience with just twelve people.
Most people thought we were crazy.” Wolf Haus’s confidence stems from a background in independent filmmaking, where small crews routinely punch far above their budgetary weight. “We grew up on indie film sets, learning to do a lot with very little,” Abbott explains. After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity investment from both Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving them the financial runway to continue development.
The founders’ Hollywood connections 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, a production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before he moved on to the Star Citizen universe. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
Join Us began as a side project for Dietsch, who was tinkering with Unreal Engine after discovering it could be downloaded for free. “I’d been a gamer my whole life, but the barrier to actually creating a game felt huge,” he says. He started learning the engine through YouTube tutorials, eventually building a few modest prototypes. The concept that stuck with him was a doomsday cult simulator 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, expecting to hit a technical wall at some point. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter saw its potential and introduced it to Dooma, a partner who helped further refine the vision. Dooma’s chief financial officer and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, entered the picture after a long career in film production and screenwriting. In the early 2000s he founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative work for titles such as 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 roughly C$430 million. After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet, in classic Hollywood fashion, a call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the industry.
“I was looking at a game that Joe had made, and it completely blew my mind,” Wendschuh says, prompting him to join the project. He then recruited Reid Schneider—formerly a vice‑president at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet—as a strategic advisor, and brought in Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran programmer from Ubisoft Montreal, to serve as chief technology officer.
With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was funding, which proved difficult amid a broader industry downturn that began in 2023. The studio began pitching that summer, receiving polite interest but also skepticism.
After securing representation from Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles, they refined their pitch and returned to investors in 2024, eventually closing a seed round with Krafton and Lifelike Capital. Abbott credits CAA’s network and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for the successful raise. “Our agent Derek Douglas had been my agent when I was making games for over a decade, and he also headed the video‑game department at William Morris,” Abbott notes.
What truly sets Join Us apart is the scale of its production relative to the size of the team. Wolf Haus operates with just thirteen full‑time staff members, each of whom wears multiple hats. Dietsch emphasizes that everyone has a voice and contributes creatively, fostering a tight‑knit environment where the final product feels like a collective labor of love. To make such an ambitious open‑world title feasible with a small crew, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from day one.
“If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” Dietsch explains. The team built an internal toolkit that allowed them to prototype features rapidly and maintain stability as the world expanded. This tooling philosophy—building the tools alongside the game—has become a cornerstone of Wolf Haus’s development pipeline and will serve future projects as well.
The equity‑funded model gave the studio the breathing room to perfect these tools without the pressure of short‑term milestones. “Krafton and Lifelike’s investment has essentially self‑funded the game,” Wendschuh says.
“We’re now only seeking a modest amount of project finance for marketing, but the core development was covered by our equity partners.” This arrangement aligns the investors’ interests with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the team to continue building robust tools even when it slows immediate progress. When asked about the role of generative AI—a hot topic in the industry—both Dietsch and Wendschuh are unequivocal: the studio does not employ AI for creative work.
“We believe a human touch is essential to game development,” Dietsch states. “Using an AI to generate assets would undermine why we get up every morning to make games.” Wendschuh adds that the only AI tools they use are for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, not for designing characters, writing dialogue, or generating art. Interestingly, Krafton, which brands itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline.
This mirrors a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio, which publicly distanced itself from the parent’s AI pivot. The team’s commitment to handcrafted content is evident in the game’s scale. The six‑kilometre‑square map is entirely hand‑built, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices. “That was a non‑negotiable for us, even as a small indie,” says Dietsch.
Dietsch also reflects on the differences between film and game creation. In film, an idea can take years to materialise, often requiring the approval of high‑profile directors or actors before a studio greenlights the project. By contrast, a game can go from concept to playable prototype within a single day, offering immediate feedback and iteration. “You can have an idea at breakfast and see it in the engine by lunch,” he says, highlighting the immediacy that fuels his passion.
Wendschuh notes that while filmmaking is front‑loaded with intense, high‑stakes production phases, games benefit from fewer gatekeepers. “Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without big names or distribution, the odds of success are slim.
In games, the barrier to entry is lower; you don’t need an A‑list star to attract players.” Both founders agree that storytelling is the common thread linking the two mediums. “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.
His early love of programming on a TI‑83 calculator and a childhood desire to make either movies or games has culminated in a project that fuses both passions, proving that a small, dedicated team can indeed disrupt the status quo.