The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator. In the clip, robed followers zip around on pigs, wielding machine guns, before the screen fades to a monstrous, Cthulhu‑like mass of tentacles. What didn’t make the edit, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—is the infamous snake‑gun.
"One of the team members’ kids came up with the idea and asked, ‘What would a snake gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that lets us scale weapons in minutes, so within half an hour I built a gun that actually fires snakes. The kid was thrilled, and the weapon stayed in the final build," Dietsch recalls. That anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s tech‑first philosophy, which has enabled a small 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 mindset: "We set out to be disruptors. We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred developers; twelve will do.’ Most people thought we were crazy, but we proved them wrong." The team’s confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where they learned to punch far above their budgetary weight. After 80 pitches, Wolf Haus finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now own stakes in the studio. The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep.
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, the production company founded by Chris Roberts before he turned his attention to Star Citizen. Abbott’s résumé also includes producing the Jamie Foxx‑starring Fight for ’84. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s hobbyist experiments in Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I’d been a gamer my whole life. The barrier to actually building something felt huge, so I started tinkering with tutorials on YouTube," he explains. Despite lacking formal training, he produced a few small prototypes before deciding to tackle something bigger: a doomsday cult simulator that fused survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept, expecting to hit a technical wall at some point.
When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a partner that helped shape the project’s direction. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s. He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative work for titles such as 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 (US$330 million). After a brief retirement—during which he bought a remote island restaurant in Canada—Wendschuh was lured back by an unexpected call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott. "I saw the demo Joe had made and it blew my mind, so I came out of retirement to help," he says. Wendschuh recruited Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic (the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet), as a strategic advisor. Schneider, in turn, brought on Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer. With the core team in place, the next hurdle was financing, a daunting task given the industry’s downturn in mid‑2023.
The studio began pitching that summer, receiving polite interest but also skepticism. After signing with CAA in Los Angeles and re‑pitching in 2024, they finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits CAA’s connections—alongside veteran game industry figures like Derek Douglas, his former agent and former head of the video‑game department at William Morris—as instrumental in securing the deal.
Despite the heavyweight backing, Wolf Haus remains a lean operation, employing just 13 full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small size is intentional: "We wanted a team where everyone has a voice, everyone can touch the creative process, and the game feels like the product of a tightly knit group." To make an ambitious open‑world title feasible with such a limited crew, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset. "Every system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. "We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive map without the project collapsing under its own weight.
The first year was as much about creating those tools as it was about designing gameplay." The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway needed to perfect these tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s capital financed the entire development, so the game is essentially self‑funded," says Wendschuh. "We’re now adding a modest amount of project finance for marketing, but the core development was covered by our investors." One of the benefits of equity backing, according to Wendschuh, is that investors share the studio’s long‑term vision: "They want the studio to increase its enterprise value, so they support us in building extensive toolsets.
Whenever we encounter a problem we can’t solve, we create a tool to address it. It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a tiny team to produce a game of this scale." When asked about the role of generative AI—a hot topic in game development—Dietsch gave a clear answer: the studio does not use it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Hand‑crafting the experience is why we get up every morning." Wendschuh adds that the only AI tools they employ are mundane productivity aids, such as calendar scheduling and email drafting.
"We have no AI involved in the artistic side of the game," he confirms. Interestingly, Krafton, which markets 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. Both executives stress the importance of preserving jobs for voice actors and artists. The six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us is entirely handcrafted, and the game’s 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human talent—an effort the team considered vital, even for an indie‑scale project.
Dietsch reflects on the contrast between film and game development. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and studio greenlights. In games, an inspiration can be prototyped the same morning and visualised instantly in the engine. This immediacy fuels his enthusiasm for interactive media.
Wendschuh notes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, costly set‑ups and a reliance on a handful of high‑profile directors or actors to secure financing. While anyone can shoot a low‑budget movie with a backyard camera, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare. By contrast, the barriers to entry for games are lower; a small team can reach a wide audience without needing A‑list talent. Both founders agree that, whether making movies or games, the core goal remains the same: to craft an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience.
Dietsch’s childhood wish to create either medium came down to a coin toss, but his early programming on a TI‑83 calculator set him on a path that now blends cinematic storytelling with interactive design. The result is Join Us—a wildly original cult simulator built by a dozen passionate creators who chose tools, talent, and tenacity over massive budgets and AI shortcuts.