The teaser for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator. The trailer showed robed followers riding pig‑mounted platforms, wielding machine guns, and culminated in a terrifying vision of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
One detail that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous snake‑gun, a weapon that Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—credits to a spontaneous suggestion from a team member’s child. “His son asked, ‘What would a snake‑gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototype tool that let us spin up a new firearm in about thirty minutes, so I built one that actually fires snakes. The kid went nuts, and the weapon stayed in the game,” Dietsch recalls. 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 mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult empire.
It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a small group of developers to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: “We set out to be disruptors. Everyone told us you need a hundred people to pull off something like this. We proved them wrong with just twelve.” The team’s confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on modest budgets.
“Our roots are in indie filmmaking, where you learn to punch well above your weight,” Abbott explains. After an arduous 80‑pitch marathon, Wolf Haus finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took minority stakes in the studio. The founders bring deep Hollywood connections to the table. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, the son of Mel Gibson and a fellow co‑founder of 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, the production company founded by Chris Roberts before he turned his focus 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. “I discovered Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt there was a massive barrier to actually creating something,” he says. He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few small prototypes, and eventually settled on the idea of a doomsday cult simulator—a blend of survival mechanics and grindhouse cinema that merged his passions for movies and games into a single intellectual property.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming he would soon hit a technical wall that would force him to abandon the project. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and introduced it to Dooma, a production partner. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had previously produced and written for film before transitioning to 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, including the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million (about $330 million USD). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, planning to retire and enjoy a quiet life. However, a call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into the industry. “I was watching a video of the prototype and it blew my mind.
I couldn’t stay retired,” Wendschuh says. He then brought on Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games vice president now heading Raccoon Logic, to serve as a strategic advisor, and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With the core team in place, the next hurdle was financing, which proved difficult amid a broader industry downturn.
The studio began pitching in summer 2023, initially receiving enthusiastic reactions but facing a tough market. After partnering with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) in Los Angeles and re‑pitching in 2024, they finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
Wendschuh credits CAA’s representation—also handling titles like 007: First Light—and the presence of seasoned veterans Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors. “My agent Derek Douglas had represented me for twelve years in games and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris,” he notes. Despite the high‑profile backing, Join Us is being built by only 13 full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team ethos is intentional: “We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative process, and to feel that this is a game made by a tight‑knit group.” To make such an ambitious open‑world possible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early on. “Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” Dietsch explains. “We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive map without the project collapsing under its own weight.” The first year of development was therefore split between ideation and constructing the tools that would later enable rapid iteration.
The equity financing model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools. “Krafton and Lifelike’s investment funds the entire development.
We’re now only adding a modest amount of project finance for marketing,” Wendschuh says. “Because the investors own equity, they’re motivated to see the studio’s enterprise value grow, which aligns with our philosophy of building robust tools to solve any problem we encounter.” When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in game development—the team is unequivocal: they do not rely on it for creative work.
“We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate core content would defeat the purpose of why we love making games,” Dietsch asserts. Wendschuh adds that the studio only uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, not for design, art, or narrative. Interestingly, Krafton, which has publicly positioned itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline.
This mirrors a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio that denied using AI for its projects. Both companies appear keen to protect the artistic integrity of their titles and avoid potential backlash over job displacement. The commitment to handcrafted content is evident in Join Us’s six‑kilometer‑square map, which was entirely built by hand, and its 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by human actors.
“That level of human‑made detail matters to us, even as a small indie,” Wendschuh emphasizes. Dietsch also highlights a key advantage of game development over filmmaking: immediacy.
In film, a concept can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and lengthy production schedules. In contrast, a game idea can be prototyped in a single morning, allowing creators to see and iterate on their vision instantly.
“You can take an idea, drop it into the engine, and watch it come alive right away,” he says. Wendschuh notes that movies are front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations for star talent and studio green‑lights, making it difficult for newcomers to break through without major names attached. Games, however, have fewer gatekeepers; a small team can launch a successful title without A‑list actors or directors.
This democratization fuels Wolf Haus’s confidence that their unconventional cult simulator can find an audience. Both founders reflect on how their childhood passions converged.
“When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games. It came down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera,” Dietsch recalls. He taught himself programming on a TI‑83 calculator, a skill that later translated seamlessly into game development.
He believes the core creative impulse—crafting experiences, telling stories, and engaging audiences—is the same across both mediums, even if the tools differ. In summary, Wolf Haus’s Join Us is a testament to what a small, tightly‑aligned team can achieve when they blend Hollywood storytelling expertise, savvy tech development, and disciplined funding.
By rejecting generative AI in favor of handcrafted artistry and building robust internal tools, they aim to deliver a unique, chaotic cult‑building adventure that stands out in a crowded market—all while proving that size isn’t the only determinant of ambition.