The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation. In the clip, robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with a terrifying image of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the final edit was the now‑infamous “snake gun,” a weapon that originated from a spontaneous suggestion by a team member’s child.
As Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, recounts, “One of the kids asked, ‘Can there be a snake gun?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a new firearm in about thirty minutes, so I built a snake‑shooting gun on the spot. He was ecstatic, and the weapon stayed in the game.” That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit AI followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style doomsday cult. The game’s design philosophy is equally chaotic, emphasizing rapid iteration and tool‑driven development.
Michael Abbott, the studio’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: “We set out to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build a AAA‑quality experience with just twelve people. Most people laughed and said it was impossible.” Wolf Haus’s confidence stems from a background in low‑budget, high‑impact filmmaking. “We come from indie cinema and we’re used to punching far above our weight,” Abbott explains.
The studio endured eighty pitch meetings before finally securing equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took a stake in the company. The founding trio brings deep Hollywood credentials. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson—who now co‑founder of Wolf Haus.
Together they 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 house founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to the Star Citizen universe. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
“Unreal was free to download, and I’d been a gamer my whole life. It felt like the biggest barrier to creation was just the cost of the tools, so I downloaded it and started learning from YouTube tutorials,” he says. Though he had never built a commercial game before, Dietsch managed to produce a few small prototypes before committing to a larger vision. “The idea of a doomsday cult simulator kept coming back to me because it merged survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—essentially fusing everything I love about movies and games into a single IP.” He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming it would eventually hit a technical wall.
When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter immediately took it to Dooma, a production partner. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had begun his career as a film producer and screenwriter before transitioning to games in the early 2000s. He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative 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 roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. “I thought I was done, just going to walk my dog on the beach,” he says. Yet a call from his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, changed his plans.
Abbott told him a friend had built a video game, and after watching a demo, Wendschuh was convinced to come out of retirement and join the effort. He introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros. Games and current head of Raccoon Logic (the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet). Schneider became a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer.
With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was financing—an especially tough task during the industry downturn of 2023‑24. The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, initially receiving positive but non‑committal feedback. After enlisting Creative Artists Agency (CAA) as representation, they returned to the market in 2024 and finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
Wendschuh credits CAA’s clout and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors. “My agent Derek Douglas, who also represented me when I was making games for twelve years, was head of the video‑game department at William Morris,” Wendschuh notes.
Despite the high‑profile backing, Join Us is being built by just thirteen full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team model is intentional: “We wanted a studio where every voice matters, where everyone can touch the creative and feel ownership of the final product.” To make such an ambitious open‑world title feasible, the team invested heavily in custom tooling from day one. “If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single developer,” Dietsch explains. “We built a toolkit that lets one person extend features across a massive map without the project collapsing under its own weight.” The first year of development was therefore split between ideating gameplay and constructing the underlying tools that would sustain future expansion.
Funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed the studio to self‑finance the entire development cycle. “The equity partners provided the capital we needed to perfect our tools, and the game is essentially self‑funded,” says Wendschuh. “We’re now only seeking a modest amount of project finance for marketing, but the core development was covered by our investors.” This equity model aligns the investors’ interests with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the team to keep building reusable tools even if it slows short‑term progress.
When asked about the role of generative AI, Dietsch gives a clear answer: the studio does not use it for creative work. “We believe a game needs a human touch. Turning development over to an AI would defeat why we get up every morning,” he says. Wendschuh adds that while the team may use AI for administrative tasks—such as calendar management and email drafting—they never employ it to generate art, dialogue, or design.
Interestingly, Krafton, which recently branded itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline. This stance mirrors that of Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio that publicly rejected AI‑driven development. The commitment to hand‑crafted content is evident in the game’s scope.
The six‑kilometre‑square map is entirely built by hand, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices. “That was non‑negotiable for us, even as a tiny indie studio,” says Dietsch. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between filmmaking and game development.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and massive budgets before a director sees the finished product on set. In contrast, a game developer can prototype an idea within hours and immediately test it in the engine. “You can have a concept in the morning, drop it into Unreal, and see it in action that same day. That immediacy is exhilarating,” he says.
Wendschuh notes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, short‑term bursts of activity on set, followed by long periods of post‑production and distribution negotiations. Games, however, have fewer gatekeepers; a small team can release a polished product without needing A‑list talent or studio backing. “Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without star power or distribution, it rarely reaches a wide audience. A game, on the other hand, can find success through platforms and word of mouth,” he explains.
Both founders agree that the core creative drive—telling stories and delivering experiences—remains the same across mediums. “When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games. It came down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas.
I learned to program on a TI‑83, so I’ve always been straddling both worlds,” Dietsch reflects. “Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re crafting an experience, a narrative, and an emotional connection. The tools change, but the purpose stays constant."