You may remember seeing the trailer for Join Us during the Xbox Showcase in June. The clip introduced a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers charge on pigs, wield machine guns, and the finale reveals colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What the trailer didn’t reveal was the infamous snake‑gun, a detail that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, proudly explains. "One of the developers’ kids came up with the idea of a snake gun," Dietsch recounts.
"He asked, ‘Could we make a gun that shoots snakes?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that lets us scale weapons in minutes, so within half an hour I built a snake‑shooter. The kid was blown away, and the weapon stayed in the final build." That anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op—to join a 1970s‑style cult.
It also highlights the studio’s tech‑first philosophy, which has allowed a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, sums it up: "We wanted to be disruptors. We told ourselves, ‘We don’t need a hundred people; twelve can do it.’ Everyone thought we were crazy, but we proved them wrong." The team’s confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where they learned to punch far above their budget. "We’ve spent years making indie films, learning to do a lot with very little," Abbott says.
After 80 pitch meetings, Wolf Haus finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving the studio the runway it needed. The founders’ Hollywood roots run deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who is also a co‑founder. The two 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 started by Chris Roberts before he moved on to Star Citizen. Later, Abbott produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us began as a side project for Dietsch while he was tinkering with Unreal Engine.
"Unreal Engine was free to download, and I’d always loved games, but the barrier to actually create something felt huge," he says. 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 games with grindhouse cinema. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo and showed it to Abbott, who then took it to Dooma. Dooma Wendschuh, the studio’s CFO and narrative director, entered the picture after a varied career that spans film production, screenwriting, and video‑game writing.
In the early 2000s he founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. He later built several tech ventures, including the cannabis‑formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After that sale he bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire and walk his dog on the beach.
Retirement, however, was short‑lived. "Out of the blue, my old roommate Michael Abbott called. He said a friend had made a video game and wanted me to look at it," Wendschuh recalls.
The demo blew his mind and pulled him back into development. He introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games VP now heading Raccoon Logic, the makers of Journey to the Savage Planet. Schneider became a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer.
With a core team forming, the next hurdle was financing. The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a downturn in the gaming industry. "People liked what we were showing, but the market was tough," Dietsch notes.
After initial outreach, Wolf Haus signed with CAA in Los Angeles, refined its pitch, and returned to investors in 2024. The seed round closed with Lifelike Capital and Krafton coming on board as equity partners.
Wendschuh believes the CAA connection—CAA also represents titles like 007: First Light—was instrumental, as were veteran advisors Schneider and Chartrand. "My agent Derek Douglas, who represented me for twelve years in games, also heads the video‑game department at William Morris," Wendschuh adds. What truly sets Join Us apart is how it is being built: a 13‑person full‑time team.
"We entered the project with a clear understanding of scope and a desire to keep the team small, so every voice matters and everyone touches the creative process," Dietsch explains. To make such an ambitious open‑world possible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early on. "If a system exists in the game, it 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 under its own weight.
The first year was as much about building tools as it was about designing the game." The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the breathing room to perfect those tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s investment funds were used to self‑finance the development. We’re now adding a modest project‑finance component for marketing, but the core development was entirely covered by those equity partners," Wendschuh says.
"Because they own equity, they’re incentivized to see the studio increase in enterprise value, which aligns with our philosophy of building reusable tools. When we hit a problem we can’t solve, we build a tool to solve it. It may slow us down short‑term, but it enables a tiny team to create a game of this scale." When the conversation turns to small‑team development, generative AI often comes up.
Dietsch is clear: the studio does not rely on AI for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Using an AI to generate assets would defeat the purpose of why we love making games," he says. Wendschuh adds that the only AI they use is for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting, not for any artistic or design decisions.
Interestingly, Krafton—despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company—insisted that Wolf Haus not employ generative AI in the creative pipeline. "Our investors wanted assurance that the studio wasn’t using AI to produce the game," Wendschuh explains, echoing similar statements from Krafton‑owned Neon Giant, which publicly denied using AI for its titles. Both founders stress the importance of preserving jobs for voice actors and artists.
"Generative AI threatens the livelihoods of creatives, and that’s not a risk we’re willing to take," Wendschuh says. Consequently, Join Us’s six‑kilometre‑square map is handcrafted, and its 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human performers. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between filmmaking and game development.
In film, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and a massive budget before the director ever sees the final product. In games, the feedback loop is immediate. "You can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, and see it in action within hours.
That immediacy is exhilarating," he notes. Wendschuh points out that movies are front‑loaded with high‑stakes pre‑production, often dependent on securing A‑list talent to get a green light. While anyone can technically shoot a low‑budget film, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare.
By contrast, the barriers to entry for games are lower, and success is more attainable without celebrity involvement. "We don’t need an A‑list actor or director; we just need a compelling experience," he says.
Both agree that the core creative impulse—telling a story, delivering an experience—remains the same across mediums. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games. It came down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera," Dietsch laughs.
"I learned programming on a TI‑83, so games have always been part of my DNA. Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re trying to engage an audience and share a narrative, and that essence never changes."