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 pig‑mounted platforms, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and eventually confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One of the most memorable, yet omitted, moments was the appearance of a snake‑shooting weapon, a feature that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says originated from a simple suggestion by a team member’s child.
“His son asked, ‘What if we had a snake gun?’ We had a modular gun system, so I whipped up a snake‑projectile weapon in about thirty minutes. It blew his mind, and it’s still in the final game,” Dietsch recalls. That anecdote perfectly captures the chaotic, sandbox‑style gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world survival experience where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to build and lead a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, 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 ambition: “We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build this with twelve people, and they all said it was impossible.” The team’s confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on modest budgets. Coming from indie film backgrounds, they are accustomed to “punching above their weight.” After 80 pitches, they finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold stakes in Wolf Haus.
The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who co‑founded Wolf Haus and co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie films 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.
Join Us began as a side project for Dietsch while he was tinkering with Unreal Engine. “Unreal Engine was free to download, and I’d been a gamer my whole life.
It felt like there was a huge barrier to actually creating something, so I started learning from YouTube tutorials and experimenting,” he explains. Despite having no formal game‑development experience, Dietsch built 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 created a proof‑of‑concept demo and showed it to Abbott, who then presented it to Dooma. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, transitioned from a film‑producer and screenwriter career into games in the early 2000s by founding Sekretagent Productions, which provided writing services for titles like 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 C$430 million (approximately $330 million USD). After selling Ebbu, he bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire.
Yet a call from his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into game development when he saw a demo of Join Us and was “blown away.” Wendschuh brought on Reid Schneider—formerly a vice president at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet—as a strategic advisor, and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer.
With the core team forming, the next hurdle was financing, which proved difficult amid a market downturn in 2023. After initial outreach, the studio partnered with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and resumed pitching in 2024, eventually closing a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. According to Wendschuh, CAA’s representation—also handling titles like 007: First Light—combined with veteran advisors Schneider and Chartrand, gave the studio credibility that helped unlock funding.
“Derek Douglas, our agent at CAA, was also my agent when I was making games for twelve years. He previously led the video‑game department at William Morris,” Wendschuh notes. What truly sets Join Us apart is the scale of its production relative to the size of the team: only thirteen full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the studio entered the project with a clear understanding of scope and a desire to keep the team intimate, ensuring that “everyone has a voice, everyone touches the creative, and the game feels like it was made by a specific group of people.” To make such an ambitious open‑world title feasible with a tiny crew, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset. “If a system exists in the game, it 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.” Consequently, a substantial portion of the first development year was spent simultaneously ideating gameplay and engineering the tools that would enable those ideas to materialize, laying a foundation for future projects as well.
The funding structure also afforded the studio the luxury of time to perfect these tools. Krafton and Lifelike’s equity investments were used to self‑fund the game’s development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing. “Equity funding aligns investors’ incentives with the studio’s long‑term value, encouraging us to build extensive tools,” says Wendschuh. “Whenever we encounter a problem we don’t know how to solve, we simply build a tool to address it.
It may slow development, but it lets a small team deliver a game of this magnitude.” When asked about the role of generative AI—a hot topic in the industry—Dietsch gave a definitive answer: none. “We believe a human touch is essential. Turning development over to an AI would defeat the purpose of why we love making games,” he says. Wendschuh adds that while the studio may use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, it is never employed in the creative process.
Interestingly, Krafton, which has branded itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required that Wolf Haus not rely on generative AI for game creation, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. Both leaders stress that AI threatens creative jobs, from voice actors to artists, and they are committed to preserving human craftsmanship. The six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us is hand‑crafted, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by real actors—a point of pride for the team.
Dietsch also reflects on the differences between film and game development. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and studio greenlights. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours, allowing immediate iteration. “You can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly,” he says, describing the exhilarating immediacy of game creation.
Wendschuh notes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, costly pre‑production phases dominated by securing high‑profile talent. While anyone can technically shoot a movie with a consumer‑grade camera, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare.
By comparison, the barriers to entry for games are lower; there’s no need for A‑list actors or directors, making independent success more attainable. Both founders agree that, at their core, film and games share the same creative impulse: delivering experiences, telling stories, and engaging audiences. Dietsch’s childhood dream of making either movies or games hinged on a coin toss and a Christmas camera. He taught himself programming on a TI‑83 calculator, and that early fascination has evolved into a career that bridges both mediums.
“Whether you’re making a movie or a game, you’re trying to give someone an experience, tell a story, and engage them. That doesn’t change between the two,” he concludes.