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 in a monstrous, Cthulhu‑like mass of tentacles.
One element that didn’t make the final edit was the infamous "snake gun," a quirky weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a child’s imagination. "My teammate’s son 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 went nuts, and we kept it in the game," Dietsch recalls. This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult.
It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first mindset, 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, explains the team’s ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors. Everyone told us a twelve‑person team couldn’t deliver a game of this scope, but we knew from indie filmmaking that a lean crew can punch well above its weight." 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 pedigree runs deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who later co‑founded Wolf Haus and co‑wrote the indie features Happy Hunting and Manifest West. Abbott is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company started by Chris Roberts before he turned his attention to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I’d spent years playing games and watching movies, but creating something felt out of reach. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," he says.
Though he had no formal game‑dev background, Dietsch eventually crafted a small demo that merged his fascination with doomsday cults, grindhouse cinema, and survival mechanics. He presented the proof of concept to Abbott, who then introduced it to Dooma, the studio’s early incubator.
Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before transitioning to games in the early 2000s. He founded Sekretagent Productions, which supplied narrative work for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later he built several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After that windfall he bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire.
"I was planning to spend my days on the beach with my dog when my old Hollywood‑hill roommate Michael Abbott called. He said a friend had made a video game and wanted my opinion.
I saw the demo, it blew my mind, and I came out of retirement," Wendschuh recounts. He then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, who became a strategic advisor.
Schneider recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. Funding proved to be the next hurdle. The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn.
"People liked what we showed, but the market was tight. We engaged CAA in Los Angeles, refined our pitch, and kept at it through 2024 until Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed our seed round," says Dietsch. Wendschuh notes that CAA’s representation—also handling titles like 007: First Light—combined with the credibility of veterans Schneider and Chartrand, helped open doors.
Despite the high‑profile backers, Wolf Haus kept its development team deliberately small—13 full‑time staff members. "We entered the project knowing exactly what we wanted to achieve, and we wanted everyone to have a voice. A compact team lets each person touch the creative process directly," Dietsch explains.
To make such an ambitious open‑world possible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early on. "Every system must be scalable and debuggable by a single developer.
We built a toolkit that let us iterate quickly and prevented the project from collapsing under its own weight as the world expanded," he adds. The equity funding model gave the studio the runway to perfect those tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s capital financed the entire development. We’re now adding a modest amount of project finance for marketing, but the core game was built entirely with their investment," Wendschuh says.
This arrangement also aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the team to continue building reusable tools for future projects. When asked about generative AI, the team’s answer is unequivocal: they do not rely on it for creative work.
"We believe a game needs a human touch. Using AI to generate assets would defeat the purpose of why we love making games," Dietsch states.
Wendschuh concedes that the studio uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, but not for any artistic or design decisions. Interestingly, Krafton—publicly positioning itself as an "AI‑first" company—specifically required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The developers are also committed to handcrafted content.
The six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us was built by hand, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, a point Dietsch emphasizes as a badge of pride for a small indie studio. Comparing game development to filmmaking, Dietsch notes the immediacy of the former.
"In film you write a script, wait years for green‑light, then shoot. In games you can prototype an idea in the morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly. That rapid feedback loop is exhilarating." Wendschuh adds that movies are front‑loaded with costly pre‑production and star‑power requirements, whereas games have fewer gatekeepers, allowing a small team without A‑list talent to reach a wide audience. Both mediums, however, share a core creative impulse: storytelling and experience design.
"When I was six I wanted to make either movies or games. It boiled down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera. I learned to program on a TI‑83, so the passion has always been there.
Whether it’s a film or a game, you’re trying to give someone an experience, tell a story, and engage them," Dietsch reflects. Join Us thus stands as a testament to what a tightly knit, technically savvy crew can achieve when they combine Hollywood know‑how, entrepreneurial capital, and a refusal to lean on generative AI. The result is a quirky, high‑energy cult simulator that promises players a uniquely handcrafted world, built by a dozen passionate creators who chose to defy industry expectations.