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 pig‑mounted platforms, firing machine guns before the screen fades to an eldritch vision of Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One element that didn’t make the final edit was the infamous “snake gun,” a quirky weapon that CEO and creative director Joe Dietsch says was born from a simple suggestion by a team member’s son. “He asked, ‘Can there be a snake gun?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool, so in about thirty minutes I built a gun that shoots snakes.
He was blown away, and we kept it in the game,” Dietsch recalls. That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit of Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival title where players can recruit followers—or teammates—to build a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a high‑fidelity, large‑scale experience to be produced by a remarkably small team. 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‑ish game with just twelve people. Most people thought we were crazy.” The founders’ confidence stems from years of doing big things on shoestring budgets in the indie film world. “We come from indie cinema and we’re used to punching far above our weight,” Abbott says.
After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving Wolf Haus the runway needed to bring Join Us to life. Wolf Haus’s leadership team is steeped in Hollywood pedigree. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who later co‑founded the studio. The pair 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 films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
The seed of Join Us was planted when Dietsch began experimenting with Unreal Engine. “Unreal was free to download, and I’d been a gamer for as long as I’d watched movies. The biggest barrier was the perception that creating a game required massive resources,” he explains.
He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, eventually crafting a handful of small prototypes before committing to a larger vision. The concept—a doomsday cult simulator that blends survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—kept pulling him back. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo and showed it to Abbott, who then presented it to Dooma, a production partner. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s, contributing writing to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
In the 2010s he founded several tech ventures, most notably 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, intending to retire. Yet, as he puts it, “the Hollywood story never really lets you walk away.” A call from his old roommate Michael Abbott—who mentioned a friend had built a video game—prompted him to review Dietsch’s demo. “It blew my mind and pulled me out of retirement,” Wendschuh says.
He then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet. Schneider joined as a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer.
With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was financing. Pitching began in the summer of 2023, a period marked by an industry downturn. “People liked what we were showing, but the market was tough,” Dietsch notes. After initial outreach, the studio signed with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) in Los Angeles, re‑engaged in 2024, and eventually closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
Wendschuh credits the CAA connection—whose roster includes titles like 007: First Light—and the presence of veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors. “My agent Derek Douglas, who handled my game work for twelve years, was also head of the video‑game department at William Morris,” Wendschuh says.
What truly sets Join Us apart is the scale of its production relative to the studio’s size: only thirteen full‑time staff members. “We entered the project with a clear understanding of the scope, but we also wanted a small‑team culture where every voice mattered and everyone could touch the creative,” Dietsch explains. To make such ambition feasible, the team invested heavily in custom tooling early on.
“If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” he says. The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and building the internal tools that would keep the open‑world from collapsing under its own weight. The funding structure also gave Wolf Haus the luxury of time to perfect those tools.
Krafton and Lifelike’s equity stakes meant the studio could self‑fund development, using the capital solely for the game itself. “We’re now adding a modest amount of project finance for marketing, but the core development was entirely covered by our investors,” Wendschuh clarifies. This equity model aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the team to keep building tools whenever they encounter a problem they can’t solve out‑of‑the‑box. When asked about the role of generative AI—a hot topic in the industry—both Dietsch and Wendschuh are unequivocal: they do not rely on it for creative work.
“We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate assets would defeat the purpose of why we love making games,” Dietsch says. Wendschuh adds that while the studio may use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management, it never touches the artistic side of development.
Interestingly, Krafton, which has branded itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The team’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s massive six‑kilometre‑square map, which was built entirely by hand, and the 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by human actors.
“That was non‑negotiable for us, even as a tiny indie,” Wendschuh emphasizes. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between film and game creation.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, subject to countless approvals and the need for high‑profile talent. In games, however, an idea can be prototyped in a single morning and tested instantly in the engine, offering a level of immediacy that he finds exhilarating. Wendschuh agrees, noting that film production is front‑loaded with intense, gate‑keeper‑driven processes, whereas games face fewer barriers to entry—no need for A‑list actors or directors to secure a greenlight.
Both agree that the core creative impulse is the same across mediums: to craft an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience. “When I was six, I wanted to make movies or games; it came down to a coin toss and a camera for Christmas,” Dietsch says.
“Whether it’s film or a video game, you’re delivering a narrative experience, and that fundamental goal doesn’t change.”