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 charge on pig‑mounted platforms, wielding machine guns before the screen fades to a monstrous, Cthulhu‑like mass of tentacles. What didn’t make the cut, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—is the infamous snake gun.
"One of the team members’ kids suggested a snake‑gun," Dietsch recounts. "We had a modular weapon system, so in about thirty minutes I built a gun that fires snakes. It blew his mind and it stayed in the final build." This anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or teammates—to join a 1970s‑style cult and wreak havoc. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s COO, summed it up: “We set out to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build a AAA‑level experience with just twelve people. Most thought we were dreaming.” The team’s confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on modest budgets.
“We come from indie filmmaking,” Abbott explains. “We’re used to punching well above our weight.” After 80 pitches, Wolf Haus finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the studio. Wolf Haus’s founders are steeped in Hollywood pedigree. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who co‑founded the studio and co‑directed the indie films Happy Hunting and Manifest West with Dietsch.
Abbott is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company founded by Chris Roberts before he moved on to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated when Dietsch began experimenting with Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt there was a massive barrier to creating something myself," he says. He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few tiny prototypes, and eventually settled on a doomsday‑cult simulator that fused his love of survival games with grindhouse cinema. He created a proof‑of‑concept demo and showed it to Abbott, who then introduced it to Dooma. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, started his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s.
He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing 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 firm Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million. After a brief retirement buying a remote Canadian island restaurant, a call from his old Hollywood‑hillroommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into game development.
Impressed by Dietsch’s demo, Wendschuh recruited former Warner Bros. Games VP Reid Schneider as a strategic advisor and hired Ubisoft veteran Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand as chief technology officer.
Funding proved challenging amid a market downturn. The studio began pitching in summer 2023, received encouragement but also skepticism, and eventually enlisted CAA (Creative Artists Agency) to represent them. Their persistence paid off in 2024 when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed a seed round.
Wendschuh credits the CAA connection and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors. Despite the high‑profile backers, Join Us is being built by a core team of just 13 full‑time staff.
Dietsch emphasizes that the small size is intentional: "We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative, and to feel ownership of the final product." To make such an ambitious open‑world possible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from day one. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," he explains.
The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and constructing the internal tools that would keep the project from collapsing under its own weight. The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect those tools.
Krafton and Lifelike’s capital financed the entire development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing later on. "Because our investors have equity, they’re motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value," says Wendschuh.
"That means they support us in building extensive toolsets, even if it slows short‑term progress, because it enables a tiny team to deliver a game of this scale." When asked about generative AI, Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not use it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Handing development over to an AI would defeat why we get up every morning," he says.
Wendschuh adds that the only AI tools they employ are mundane productivity aids—calendar scheduling and email drafting. Krafton, despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, echoing similar stances from other Krafton‑owned studios. The team’s commitment to handcrafted content is evident. The six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us is entirely hand‑built, and the game features roughly 15,000 voice lines recorded by human actors.
"That was non‑negotiable for us," Dietsch notes, even as an indie studio. Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between film and games. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, star power, and studio backing before it ever sees the light of day. In game development, an inspiration can be prototyped within hours and tested directly in the engine.
"You can have an idea this morning, drop it into Unreal, and see it instantly," he says, describing the immediacy that fuels his passion. Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense pre‑production phases aimed at securing A‑list talent to green‑light a project. While anyone can shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without big names or distribution is rare. By contrast, the game industry has fewer gatekeepers; a small team can release a successful title without celebrity endorsements.
"We don’t need an A‑list actor or director," he asserts. Both creators agree that the core impulse—telling a story and delivering an experience—remains the same across mediums. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games. It boiled down to a coin toss and a camera for Christmas," Dietsch smiles.
"Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re crafting an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. That fundamental drive hasn’t changed."