The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation where robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and culminate in a showdown with Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One element that didn’t make the public cut was the infamous "snake gun," a quirky weapon that emerged from a simple suggestion by a team member’s child. Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, recounts the moment: the youngster asked, “Can there be a snake gun?” Leveraging an in‑house tool that allowed rapid weapon prototyping, Dietsch whipped up a functioning snake‑shooter in roughly thirty minutes. The novelty delighted the kid and earned a permanent spot in the final product.
That anecdote encapsulates the chaotic, sandbox‑style gameplay Join Us promises. Players are invited to build and lead a 1970s‑inspired cult, recruiting AI‑controlled followers or friends in co‑op mode to expand their influence across an open‑world map. The game’s design philosophy mirrors the studio’s broader approach: lean, tool‑centric, and fiercely independent.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed it up succinctly: “We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build a AAA‑level experience with a dozen developers, and they laughed.” The team’s confidence stems from a history of punching far above their weight.
Many of the founders cut their teeth on independent film projects, where limited budgets demand creative problem‑solving. "We come from indie cinema and we’re used to doing massive things with tiny crews," Abbott explains.
After a marathon of 80 pitch meetings, Wolf Haus finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the studio. Wolf Haus’s leadership team is steeped in Hollywood pedigree.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of actor‑director Mel Gibson; the two later 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 house founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to the Star Citizen universe.
Abbott also produced the Jamie Foxx‑led thriller Fight for ’84. This blend of cinematic know‑how and entrepreneurial spirit set the stage for their venture into interactive entertainment.
Join Us began as a personal experiment in Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d been a gamer and movie fan my whole life, but the barrier to actually making something felt huge," Dietsch says. He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, crafting a handful of small prototypes before committing to a larger vision: a doomsday cult simulator that merged survival mechanics with grindhouse aesthetics.
The initial proof‑of‑concept was rough but promising, and when he showed it to Abbott, the latter immediately took it to Dooma, the company’s internal incubator. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, brings a unique blend of film and tech experience. He started as a producer and screenwriter before founding Sekretagent Productions, which supplied narrative work for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. In the 2010s he launched several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis‑formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million).
After the sale, 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 into the industry. He watched a demo of Join Us, was blown away, and decided to re‑enter the game‑development world. Wendschuh recruited veteran game executive Reid Schneider—formerly a VP at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic—to act as strategic advisor. Schneider, in turn, brought on Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With this core team assembled, the next hurdle was funding, a daunting task given the industry’s downturn in the summer of 2023.
The studio partnered with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) for representation, re‑pitched in 2024, and eventually closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. The involvement of CAA, which also represents titles such as 007: First Light, proved instrumental. "Derek Douglas, our agent at CAA, had been my agent during my twelve years in games and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris," Wendschuh notes. This network, combined with the credibility of Schneider and Chartrand, helped the studio break through a skeptical market.
Despite the high ambitions, Join Us is being built by just 13 full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the team deliberately kept the roster small to preserve a collaborative atmosphere where every voice matters and everyone can touch the creative process.
To make a large‑scale open world feasible with such a lean crew, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling early in development. "If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains.
The first year of production was split between ideating gameplay features and engineering the underlying toolset that would allow those features to scale across the map without collapsing under their own weight. The funding structure further supported this tool‑heavy approach.
Both Krafton and Lifelike Capital hold equity in Wolf Haus, and their capital has been used to self‑fund the entire development cycle. While a modest amount of project finance is being allocated for marketing, the core development budget remains entirely sourced from these equity partners. "Equity investors want the studio to increase its enterprise value, so they encourage us to build reusable tools," Wendschuh says.
"When we hit a problem we don’t know how to solve, we simply build a tool to address it. It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a tiny team to deliver a game of this magnitude." In an era where generative AI is touted as a shortcut for small studios, Wolf Haus deliberately avoids it for creative work.
"We don’t use any generative AI in the game’s creation," Dietsch states flatly. "The human touch is essential; handing the creative process over to an algorithm would defeat the purpose of why we love making games." Wendschuh adds that the studio does employ AI for mundane administrative tasks—calendar management and email drafting—but not for art, design, or narrative. Interestingly, Krafton, which has publicly positioned itself as an "AI‑first" company, specifically required that Wolf Haus refrain from using generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The team’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and voice work.
The six‑kilometre‑square map is entirely hand‑built, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not AI‑generated speech. Dietsch believes this human element is crucial, even for an indie title, as it preserves the authenticity and emotional resonance that players expect. Transitioning from film to games also gave Dietsch a new sense of immediacy.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring countless approvals before a director ever sees it on set. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, inserted into the engine, and instantly visualized. This rapid iteration cycle fuels the studio’s creative energy and keeps the development process agile. Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, short‑term bursts of activity on set, followed by long periods of post‑production and distribution negotiations.
Games, however, have fewer gatekeepers; a small team can release a polished product without needing A‑list talent or major studio backing. This democratization of distribution is one of the reasons Wolf Haus feels confident in their lean model. Both founders trace their passion back to childhood.
"When I was six, I wanted to make movies or games—it came down to a coin toss and a camera for Christmas," Dietsch recalls. He taught himself programming on a TI‑83 calculator, laying the groundwork for a lifelong fascination with interactive storytelling.
He concludes that, regardless of medium, the core goal remains the same: to craft experiences, tell stories, and engage audiences. In summary, Wolf Haus Games is proving that a small, tightly knit team with the right mix of Hollywood experience, tech savvy, and strategic financing can produce an ambitious, high‑fidelity title without relying on generative AI. Their journey—from a free Unreal Engine download to a fully realized cult‑simulator—demonstrates that disruption is possible when creativity, tool‑building, and a willingness to defy industry expectations converge.