The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash a hail of gunfire, and ultimately confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One of the most memorable, yet unseen, elements was the "snake gun"—a weapon that fires serpents instead of bullets. According to Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, the idea came from a team member’s child who simply asked, “Can there be a snake gun?” Leveraging a rapid‑prototyping tool, Dietsch whipped up a functional snake‑shooting weapon in roughly half an hour, delighting the youngster and cementing the weapon’s place in the final product. That anecdote encapsulates the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises.
The game is an open‑world sandbox survival experience set in a 1970s‑style cult, where players can recruit AI‑controlled followers or team up with friends in co‑op mode. More importantly, it showcases the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a far 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 this with twelve people, and they laughed.
We proved them wrong.” The Wolf Haus team’s confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on modest budgets. Many of the founders cut their teeth in indie filmmaking, where they learned to punch far above their weight.
Before securing any external capital, they delivered eighty pitches before finally attracting investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took equity stakes in the studio. The founding trio brings deep Hollywood connections to the table.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of actor‑director Mel Gibson—and the two later co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie features Happy Hunting and Manifest West. Abbott is the son of renowned 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.
These cinematic roots inform the game’s narrative flair and visual style. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
“I discovered Unreal was free to download and immediately started tinkering with it using YouTube tutorials,” he recalls. Although he had no formal game‑development background, he managed to create a few small prototypes before deciding to tackle something more ambitious—a doomsday cult simulator that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and the concept quickly gained momentum.
Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director, also transitioned from film to games. He began as a producer and screenwriter, later founding Sekretagent Productions, which supplied narrative work for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
In the 2010s he launched several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis‑formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After cashing out, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire.
However, a call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, about a video‑game prototype reignited his passion, pulling him back into development. Wendschuh introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros.
Games vice‑president now heading 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 this core in place, the studio turned its focus to funding—a daunting task given the industry downturn of 2023‑24. After initial outreach, they partnered with CAA in Los Angeles, refined their pitch, and finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
The involvement of CAA, which also represents titles like 007: First Light, proved invaluable, as did the guidance of veteran industry figures such as Derek Douglas, a long‑time agent for Wendschuh and former head of the video‑game department at William Morris. Their combined experience helped the small team navigate a skeptical market and secure the necessary capital.
Despite the modest headcount—thirteen full‑time staff members—the studio has managed to maintain a collaborative culture where every employee can influence creative decisions. Dietsch emphasizes that the team deliberately built a suite of internal tools early in development. “If a system is going to scale across an open‑world map, it must be debuggable by a single person,” he explains.
The first year of production was therefore split between designing gameplay concepts and engineering the tooling infrastructure that would keep the project from collapsing under its own weight. Funding from Krafton and Lifelike has allowed Wolf Haus to self‑finance the game’s development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing.
Because the investors hold equity, they are incentivized to support the studio’s long‑term value creation, which includes the extensive tool‑building philosophy. “Whenever we encounter a problem we don’t know how to solve, we simply build a tool to address it,” says Wendschuh. This approach may slow down short‑term progress but enables a tiny team to produce a game of this scale. When asked about the role of generative AI, Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not employ AI for any creative aspects of development.
“We believe a human touch is essential. Turning the creative process over to an algorithm would defeat the reason we get up every morning,” he states. Wendschuh adds that while the team uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, it never touches design, writing, or asset creation. Interestingly, Krafton—positioning itself as an “AI‑first” company—explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline.
This mirrors a broader industry trend where publishers distance themselves from AI‑generated content to protect artistic integrity and avoid potential legal complications. Wendschuh notes that AI threatens jobs for voice actors and artists, a concern that aligns with the studio’s commitment to handcrafted content. Indeed, the six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us is entirely hand‑crafted, and the game’s 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human performers. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between film and game production.
In cinema, a concept can take years to materialize, requiring countless approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent before a studio greenlights the project. By contrast, a game idea can be prototyped within hours and tested directly in the engine, offering immediate feedback and creative freedom. This immediacy, he argues, lowers the barrier to entry and reduces reliance on gatekeepers such as A‑list actors or directors.
Both mediums, however, share a common purpose: to deliver an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience. Dietsch’s childhood fascination with both movies and video games—spurred by programming on a TI‑83 calculator and receiving a camera for Christmas—has culminated in a career that straddles both worlds. Join Us stands as a testament to what a small, focused team with a strong cinematic pedigree, savvy tech infrastructure, and a clear philosophical stance against generative AI can achieve in today’s competitive gaming landscape.