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 charge on pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with a massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacle monster looming on the horizon. What the audience didn’t see was the infamous "snake gun," a weapon that Joe Dietsch, the chief executive officer and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a child’s imagination. "One of our team member’s son asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us build a weapon in roughly half an hour, so I threw together a snake‑gun on the fly.
The kid went nuts, and the weapon stayed in the final build," Dietsch recalls. This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or other players—to join a 1970s‑style cult.
It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first mindset, 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‑level experience with just twelve people. Most people laughed, saying it was impossible." Their confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where small budgets often demand creative over‑engineering. After 80 pitches, the team finally secured equity financing 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 actor Mel Gibson, and 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 his transition to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx.
Join Us originated when Dietsch began tinkering with Unreal Engine, drawn by the fact that the engine could be downloaded for free. "I’d loved games forever, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," he explains. Though he had no formal game‑development background, Dietsch soon conceived a doomsday‑cult simulation that merged his love for survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo and showed it to Abbott, who then introduced the project to Dooma. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director, entered the picture after a varied career that spanned film production, screenwriting, and video‑game writing for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
He later founded several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million. After buying a remote Canadian island restaurant and planning a quiet retirement, a call from his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the industry. "I watched the demo Joe sent me and it blew my mind.
I quit my retirement plan and jumped in," Wendschuh says. Through Wendschuh’s network, the studio recruited Reid Schneider—formerly a vice president at Warner Bros.
Games—and Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as strategic advisor and chief technology officer respectively. With the core team in place, the next hurdle was funding, which proved difficult amid a market downturn in 2023. After initial outreach, the studio signed with CAA in Los Angeles, re‑pitched in 2024, and finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. The partnership with CAA, which also represents titles like 007: First Light, proved invaluable, as did the presence of seasoned veterans Schneider and Chartrand.
"Our agent Derek Douglas had represented me for twelve years in games and even led the video‑game department at William Morris," notes Wendschuh. What truly sets Join Us apart is the scale of its production relative to its staffing. With only thirteen full‑time employees, the studio emphasized a collaborative environment where every voice mattered. To make such an ambitious open‑world title feasible, the team invested heavily in custom tooling from day one.
"Any system we build must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. "We spent the first year simultaneously designing gameplay and engineering the tools that would let a small team expand the world without the project collapsing under its own weight." Funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed Wolf Haus to self‑finance development, using equity capital to cover most costs. "Our investors want the studio to increase its enterprise value, so they support us in building extensive toolsets," says Wendschuh. "When we hit a problem we can’t solve, we simply create a tool to fix it.
It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a tiny team to produce a game of this magnitude." Despite the industry’s hype around generative AI, Wolf Haus deliberately shuns it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential.
Using AI to generate core game content would defeat why we get up each morning," Dietsch says. Wendschuh adds that the studio only employs AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton—positioning itself as an "AI‑first" company—insisted that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. The commitment to handcrafted content is evident: the six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us was built by hand, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors.
"That level of human involvement mattered to us, even as a small indie," Wendschuh emphasizes. Dietsch also highlights a key advantage of game development over film: immediacy. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and extensive pre‑production.
In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours, allowing developers to see and iterate on their vision instantly. "You can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, and see it in action by lunch," he says. While filmmaking remains heavily front‑loaded—requiring high‑profile talent to secure studio green‑lights—games offer a lower barrier to entry. "Anyone could rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without star power or distribution, success is unlikely.
In games, the gatekeepers are fewer, so a small team can reach a wide audience without A‑list names," Wendschuh notes. Both mediums, however, share a common creative drive: storytelling and experience design. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games. It boiled down to a coin toss and maybe getting a camera for Christmas.
I learned programming on a TI‑83, so both have always been part of me. Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re trying to tell a story and engage an audience—that core never changes."