The trailer for Join Us made a splash during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers ride pigs, unleash machine‑guns, and confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One detail that didn’t appear in the teaser was the infamous snake gun, a weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a child’s off‑hand suggestion. "My team member’s son asked, ‘What if there’s a snake gun?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a new firearm in about thirty minutes, so I built a snake‑shooting gun on the fly.
The kid went nuts, and the weapon stayed in the final build," Dietsch recalls. That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game where players can recruit NPC followers or friends into a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a high‑fidelity experience to be produced by a remarkably small crew.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, sums up the team’s philosophy: "We set out to be disruptors. Everyone told us a twelve‑person studio couldn’t build a game of this scope, but we knew indie film taught us to punch far above our weight." After 80 pitch meetings, 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, and 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, the production company started by Chris Roberts before his transition to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
Join Us traces its origins to Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d been a gamer for as long as I’d been a movie‑watcher, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge. I taught myself from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," he says. Those modest projects gave him the confidence to tackle a larger vision: a doomsday cult simulator that fused survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo and showed it to Abbott, who then introduced it to Dooma, the studio that would later become Wolf Haus. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had a background in film production and screenwriting before moving into games in the early 2000s. He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative work for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
Later, he launched several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million. After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, planning a quiet retirement. Yet a sudden call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back. "I watched the demo Joe sent me, and it blew my mind.
I quit my retirement plan and jumped back into games," Wendschuh says. He then recruited Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, to serve as strategic advisor, and brought in Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. Funding proved challenging amid a market downturn.
The team began pitching in summer 2023, receiving polite interest but little commitment. After enlisting CAA as representation and re‑pitching in 2024, they finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
Wendschuh notes that CAA’s connections—representing titles like 007: First Light—and the presence of veteran advisors were instrumental. Despite the high‑profile backing, Join Us remains a lean operation with only 13 full‑time staff. Dietsch explains that the studio deliberately built a tool‑heavy pipeline so that a single developer could scale, debug, and iterate on any system. "We spent the first year inventing the game while simultaneously building the tools that would let a small team expand the world without it collapsing under its own weight," he says.
This approach was funded directly by the equity partners, allowing the studio to self‑finance development while reserving a modest amount of project finance for marketing. When asked about generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not use it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential.
AI might help schedule meetings or draft emails, but it has no place in the actual design or art of our game," says Dietsch. Wendschuh adds that Krafton, despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid AI in the creative pipeline, echoing a broader industry caution about AI displacing voice actors and artists. Every element of Join Us—from its six‑kilometre‑square map to its 15,000 voice lines—was handcrafted by humans.
Dietsch contrasts the immediacy of game development with the lengthy gestation of film. "In movies you write a script, wait years for greenlight, 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 intoxicating," he says.
Wendschuh points out that film production is front‑loaded with high‑profile talent and studio approvals, whereas games have far fewer gatekeepers. "Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without big names or distribution it’s hard to break through. In games, you don’t need an A‑list actor or director to reach an audience," he explains.
Both mediums, however, share a core purpose: delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. Dietsch reflects, "I wanted to make games or movies from the age of six. Whether it’s a film or a game, the goal is the same—create a compelling narrative that moves people."