The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator where robed followers ride pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and eventually confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One element that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous snake gun, a feature that CEO and creative director Joe Dietsch says was born from a child’s off‑hand suggestion.
"One of the team members’ sons asked, ‘What would a snake‑gun look like?’ We had a modular weapon system, so within about thirty minutes I built a gun that fires snakes. It blew his mind and it stayed in the game," Dietsch recalls. That anecdote captures the chaotic, sandbox‑style gameplay Join Us promises: an open‑world survival experience set in a 1970s‑style cult where players can recruit AI followers or friends in co‑op mode.
It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has allowed a small group to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff. "We wanted to be disruptors," says Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer. "We told everyone we could build this with twelve people, and they all thought we were crazy." The team’s confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where they learned to achieve big results on modest budgets.
"We come from indie film, we’re used to punching well above our weight," Abbott explains. After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving Wolf Haus the financial runway it needed.
Wolf Haus’s founders have deep ties to Hollywood. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, and the two later 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, a production company started by Chris Roberts before his transition to the Star Citizen project. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
The seed of Join Us was planted when Dietsch began experimenting with Unreal Engine, attracted by its free download model. "I’d loved games for years, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge. I downloaded Unreal, followed YouTube tutorials, and started tinkering," he says. Though he had no prior development experience, he managed to ship a few small prototypes before deciding to tackle something larger: a doomsday cult simulator that merged his love of survival games with grindhouse cinema aesthetics.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, expecting to hit a technical wall at some point. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took 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.
He later founded several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million. After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back. "I watched the demo Joe sent me and it blew my mind, so I came out of retirement," Wendschuh recounts.
He introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, who became a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With a core team forming, the next hurdle was financing. The studio began pitching in summer 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn.
Initial outreach yielded interest but no commitments. After signing with CAA in Los Angeles, the team resumed pitching in 2024 and eventually 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 like Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors. Despite the pedigree, Join Us is being built by just 13 full‑time staff. "We entered the project with a clear sense of scope and wanted to keep a small‑team culture where everyone has a voice and touches the creative process," says Dietsch. 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. We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across the map without the project collapsing," he explains. The first year of development was therefore split between ideating gameplay and constructing the underlying tools, a strategy that also benefits future projects. The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the breathing room to perfect these tools.
"Krafton and Lifelike provided capital that we used to self‑fund the game. We’re now adding a small amount of project finance for marketing, but the core development was covered by their investment," Wendschuh notes.
Because the investors hold equity, they are motivated to see the studio increase in enterprise value, which aligns with Wolf Haus’s ethos of building reusable tools rather than cutting corners. When asked about the role of generative AI, Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not use it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Turning development over to an AI would defeat why we get up in the morning," he says.
Wendschuh adds that while they may use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management, it never touches the creative pipeline. Interestingly, Krafton, which has branded itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required Wolf Haus not to employ generative AI in game creation, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio.
The team also rejects AI‑generated voice work. Join Us features a six‑kilometre‑square handcrafted map and 15,000 voice lines recorded by human actors—an effort the developers consider crucial for preserving artistic integrity, even for an indie title.
Dietsch highlights a key advantage of games over film: immediacy. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and extensive pre‑production. In game development, an idea can be prototyped in a single morning, placed into the engine, and instantly visualized.
Wendschuh points out that while film production is front‑loaded with high‑profile talent gatekeeping, games have far fewer barriers. "You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to make a successful game," he says, noting that the democratization of tools and distribution platforms makes it easier for small teams to reach audiences.
Both mediums, however, share a common creative impulse: telling stories and delivering experiences. Dietsch reflects that his childhood fascination with both cameras and calculators set him on a path where the distinction between making movies and making games feels almost irrelevant.
"Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re crafting an experience, telling a story, and engaging the audience," he concludes.