The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator. In the clip, robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with an image of massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacles looming in the distance.
One detail that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous "snake gun," a weapon that originated from a simple suggestion by a team member’s child. Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, recalls the moment vividly. "A kid on the team asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us scale weapons in minutes, so I whipped up a snake‑gun in about half an hour. The kid was thrilled, and the weapon stuck around in the game." This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult.
It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a high‑fidelity, large‑scale experience to be built by a surprisingly small crew. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, explains the team’s philosophy: "We set out to be disruptors. Everyone told us you needed a hundred‑person studio to pull off something of this scope, but we believed twelve developers could do it.
It sounded impossible, yet our background in indie filmmaking taught us how to punch far above our weight." After 80 pitch meetings, the studio finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold stakes in Wolf Haus. The founding trio brings deep Hollywood connections to the table. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of actor Mel Gibson—who 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 his transition to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us was born from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt there was a huge barrier to creating something myself," he says.
He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, built a few modest prototypes, and eventually settled on a doomsday cult simulator that merged his love of survival games with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. The proof‑of‑concept was rough but promising, and when he showed it to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, the studio that would later become Wolf Haus.
Dooma Wendschuh, the studio’s chief financial officer and narrative director, entered the picture after a varied career in film and tech. He began 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 company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote restaurant on a tiny Canadian island, intending to retire. Yet a call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into game development.
"I watched the demo Joe had built, and it blew my mind. It convinced me to come out of retirement," he says. Wendschuh then recruited Reid Schneider—former Warner Bros. Games VP and now head of Raccoon Logic—to serve as a strategic advisor, and he brought in Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer.
With this core assembled, the studio turned to fundraising during a market downturn in the summer of 2023. Despite the challenging climate, the team persisted, eventually signing with CAA in Los Angeles and landing seed financing from Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024.
The partnership with CAA proved invaluable. "Our agent Derek Douglas had represented me for twelve years in the games industry and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris," Wendschuh notes.
This network, combined with the credibility of veterans like Schneider and Chartrand, helped the studio secure the needed capital. What truly sets Join Us apart is the way it is being built: a 13‑person full‑time team. Dietsch emphasizes that the small size is intentional. "We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative process, and to feel ownership over the final product." To make such an ambitious open‑world title feasible with limited manpower, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling from day one.
"Any system in the game has to be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. The first year of development was spent simultaneously designing gameplay concepts and engineering the tools that would later allow those concepts to scale across a six‑kilometre‑square map.
Funding from Krafton and Lifelike has allowed the studio to self‑finance the bulk of development, using equity investment rather than traditional publisher advances. "Our investors are motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they support our tool‑building ethos," says Wendschuh. "When we encounter a problem we don’t know how to solve, we build a bespoke tool.
It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a tiny team to create a game of this magnitude." In an industry increasingly obsessed with generative AI, Wolf Haus deliberately avoids it in the creative pipeline. "We believe a human touch is essential for games.
Turning development over to an AI would defeat the purpose of why we get up every morning," Dietsch states. Wendschuh adds that while the team uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management, no generative AI touches the artistic side of Join Us.
Krafton, despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company, also insisted that Wolf Haus not employ generative AI for core development, echoing similar positions taken by other Krafton‑owned studios. The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The entire six‑kilometre‑square map was manually designed, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors—a point the team views as non‑negotiable, even for an indie title. "We don’t want AI to replace voice actors or artists; that would undermine the creative labor we value," Wendschuh says.
Dietsch reflects on the contrast between film and games. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring scripts, casting, green‑lighting, and long production cycles. In games, an idea can be prototyped within hours and tested instantly in the engine.
"That immediacy is exhilarating. You can take a concept from a morning brainstorm to a playable demo by the afternoon," he says. Wendschuh notes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, often dependent on securing a handful of high‑profile talent before a project can move forward, whereas games have far fewer gatekeepers.
"You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to get a game off the ground," he explains. Both mediums, however, share a common creative impulse: storytelling and immersion. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games. It came down to a coin toss and a camera for Christmas," Dietsch laughs.
"I learned programming on a TI‑83, so I’ve always been drawn to both. Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience.
The tools may differ, but the goal remains the same."