The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and conclude with a looming image of Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the cut, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—is the infamous snake‑gun.
"One of the developer’s kids suggested, ‘What if there’s a snake gun?’" Dietsch recalls. "We had a rapid‑prototyping tool, so within half an hour I built a weapon that actually fires snakes. The kid was blown away, and the weapon stayed in the final build." That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit at the heart of Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game where players can recruit NPC followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a tiny crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff.
"We set out to be disruptors," says Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer. "We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred people; twelve can handle this.’ Most people laughed, thinking it impossible." The team’s confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on modest budgets. "Our background is indie film," Abbott notes. "We’re used to punching far above our weight class." After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus.
The founders’ Hollywood connections run deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who now co‑founders Wolf Haus. Together they 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 his transition to Star Citizen.
Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch tinkering in Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge," he explains.
He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few small prototypes, and eventually gravitated toward a doomsday cult simulator—a concept that fused his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, ran into technical roadblocks, and showed the result to Abbott, who then presented it to Dooma.
Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s. He founded Sekretagent Productions, supplying narrative work for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
Later, he launched several tech ventures, including the cannabis‑formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, a call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into game development. Impressed by Dietsch’s demo, Wendschuh helped bring in Reid Schneider—former Warner Bros.
Games VP and current head of Raccoon Logic—as a strategic advisor, and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With the core team in place, the next hurdle was financing, a task made tougher by the industry downturn of 2023‑24. "People liked what we were building, but the market was cold," Dietsch says. After initial outreach, the studio signed with CAA in Los Angeles, re‑pitched in 2024, and eventually closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
Wendschuh credits CAA’s influence—representing titles like 007: First Light—and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors. Despite the high ambitions, the studio remains lean, employing just 13 full‑time staff.
"We entered the project with a clear sense of scope and a desire to keep the team small, so every voice matters and everyone can touch the creative core," Dietsch says. To make a large‑scale open world feasible for such a compact crew, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling early on.
"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 world to expand without collapsing under its own weight.
The equity funding model gave the studio the runway to perfect those tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s capital funded the entire development; we’re now only seeking modest project finance for marketing," Wendschuh notes. Because the investors’ returns are tied to the studio’s enterprise value, they encourage the team’s tool‑building ethos. When a problem arises, the solution is to craft a bespoke tool, even if it slows short‑term progress, because it enables the tiny team to achieve something normally reserved for studios dozens of times larger.
In an era where many developers lean on generative AI, Wolf Haus deliberately steers clear of it for creative work. "We believe a game needs a human touch.
Using AI to generate core content would defeat the purpose of why we love making games," Dietsch says. Wendschuh adds that the studio only uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton—publicly branding itself as an "AI‑first" company—insisted that Wolf Haus not employ generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio.
The commitment to handcrafted content is evident: the six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us is entirely hand‑built, and the game features roughly 15,000 voice lines recorded by human actors. "Even as a small indie, we felt it was crucial to keep that human element," Dietsch emphasizes.
Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between film and game creation. Film projects can take years from script to screen, often requiring approval from high‑profile talent and studios before production even begins. In games, an idea can be prototyped within hours, allowing immediate iteration.
"You can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, and see it in action the same day," he says, highlighting the immediacy that draws him to interactive media. Wendschuh points out that movies are heavily front‑loaded: securing a star director or actor is essential for greenlighting, and without those names, a low‑budget film rarely finds an audience. Games, by contrast, have fewer gatekeepers; a small team can reach a global market without A‑list names.
"We don’t need a Hollywood star to sell a game," he notes, underscoring the democratizing power of the medium. Both founders agree that storytelling is the common thread linking their passions. "Whether you’re making a movie or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging the audience," Dietsch concludes, noting that his childhood love of both cameras and programming set him on this dual‑path, and that the coin‑toss that sent him down the game‑making road feels just as rewarding as any cinematic venture.