The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, giving viewers a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator. In the clip, robed followers zip around on pigs, wielding machine guns, before the screen fades to a massive, Cthulhu‑inspired mass of tentacles. What didn’t make the edit was the infamous snake gun, a quirky weapon that CEO and creative director Joe Dietsch says was born from a child’s imagination. "One of the team members’ kids asked if we could make a snake‑shooting gun," Dietsch recalls.
"We had a modular weapon system, so I whipped up a prototype in about half an hour. The kid went nuts, and the gun stayed in the final build." This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s tech‑first philosophy, which has allowed a tiny crew 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 wanted to be disruptors.
We told everyone we could build a AAA‑quality game with just twelve people. Most people laughed, saying it was impossible." Their confidence wasn’t baseless.
The founders came from indie‑film backgrounds where they learned to stretch limited budgets to their breaking point. "We’re used to punching above our weight," Abbott noted.
After 80 pitches, the team finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving Wolf Haus the runway to finish Join Us. The studio’s leadership is steeped in Hollywood history.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who later co‑founded Wolf Haus 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 house founded by Chris Roberts before his Star Citizen venture.
Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. This cinematic lineage informs the game’s aesthetic, which blends grindhouse horror with survival mechanics. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I was frustrated by the high barrier to creating my own game," he explains.
He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, eventually building a few modest prototypes. The concept that stuck was a doomsday cult simulator—a mash‑up of survival gameplay and the over‑the‑top vibe of 1970s exploitation cinema. He built a proof‑of‑concept, expecting to hit a technical wall, but the demo impressed Abbott, who then presented it to Dooma, a partner studio.
Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, entered the video‑game world after a career as a film producer and screenwriter. 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 roughly C$430 million.
After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, a call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into development. Wendschuh was blown away by Dietsch’s demo and agreed to join the effort, bringing on former Warner Bros. Games VP Reid Schneider as strategic advisor and Ubisoft Montreal veteran Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand as chief technology officer. Funding proved to be the next hurdle.
The team began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn. "People liked what we were showing, but the market was tight," Dietsch says. With the help of Creative Artists Agency (CAA), they refined their pitch and secured a seed round from Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024.
The CAA connection, which also represents titles like 007: First Light, proved invaluable, as did the credibility added by veteran advisors Schneider and Chartrand. Despite the high‑profile backers, the studio has remained deliberately small—13 full‑time staff members at the time of writing. "We wanted a tight‑knit group where everyone has a voice and can touch every part of the creative process," Dietsch explains. To make such an ambitious open‑world game feasible with a lean crew, the team invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset.
"Every system has to be scalable and debuggable by a single person," says Dietsch. The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and building the internal tools that would later allow the world to expand without collapsing under its own weight. The equity financing model gave Wolf Haus the luxury of time to perfect those tools.
"Krafton and Lifelike’s investment essentially self‑funded the game," Wendschuh notes. While the studio is now adding a modest amount of project finance for marketing, the core development has been covered entirely by the equity partners.
This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term vision: building reusable tools that can serve future projects as well as Join Us. When asked about generative AI, the team’s answer is unequivocal: they do not rely on it for creative work.
"We believe a human touch is essential to game making," Dietsch says. "Using an AI to generate assets would defeat the purpose of why we get up every morning." Wendschuh adds that the studio only uses AI for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting.
Interestingly, Krafton, which markets itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required that Wolf Haus not employ generative AI in the creative pipeline before investing. This mirrors a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant, which publicly distanced itself from the parent’s AI push. The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s massive map and voice work. The six‑kilometre‑square island is entirely hand‑modeled, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors—an effort the team deemed crucial for preserving artistic integrity, even as an indie studio.
Dietsch reflects on the contrast between film and games, noting the immediacy of the latter. "In film, you write a script, wait years for green‑light, then finally shoot. With games, you can prototype an idea in the morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly. That speed is exhilarating." Wendschuh agrees, pointing out that movies are front‑loaded with costly pre‑production and reliance on A‑list talent to secure financing, whereas games have far fewer gatekeepers.
"You don’t need a Hollywood star to get a game funded; you just need a compelling experience," he says. Both founders trace their creative spark back to childhood.
Dietsch recalls wanting to make either movies or games at six years old, his path decided by a coin toss and a Christmas camera. He taught himself programming on a TI‑83 calculator, laying the groundwork for a career that now merges cinematic storytelling with interactive design.
In his view, the core purpose remains the same across mediums: to craft an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience. This philosophy drives Join Us, a game that blends absurd cult antics, meticulous world‑building, and a steadfast belief in human‑crafted artistry, all achieved by a dozen‑plus developers who refused to lean on generative AI.