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 ride pigs, unleash machine‑guns, and eventually confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One of the most memorable, yet omitted, moments was the appearance of a "snake gun," a weapon that shoots 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. "His son asked, ‘Can we have a snake gun?’" Dietsch recalled. "Because we had built a flexible gun‑creation tool, I was able to prototype a snake‑shooting weapon in roughly thirty minutes.
The kid went nuts, and the gun stayed in the final build." That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us. The game is an open‑world sandbox survival experience set in a 1970s‑style cult where players can recruit AI followers or invite friends to join their cause. The title’s wild mechanics are a direct result of Wolf Haus’s technology‑first philosophy, which has allowed a small group of developers to produce a high‑fidelity, content‑rich experience that would normally require a far larger studio. Michael Abbott, the company’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors.
While everyone assumed you need a hundred‑person team to build a game of this scope, we proved that twelve talented people could do it." The founders’ background helped them punch well above their weight. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University in California alongside Louie Gibson, the son of actor‑director Mel Gibson and another Wolf Haus co‑founder. Together they co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie features Happy Hunting and Manifest West. Abbott grew up in a Hollywood make‑up family—his father, Larry Abbott, was a veteran makeup artist—and later helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company founded by Chris Roberts before he turned his attention to Star Citizen.
Abbott also produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. This blend of indie‑film hustle and industry connections gave the team a unique perspective on low‑budget, high‑impact storytelling. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s personal experiments with Unreal Engine.
"Unreal Engine was free to download, and I’d always loved games, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge," he explained. He began learning the engine through YouTube tutorials, eventually building a handful of small prototypes. The concept that persisted was a doomsday cult simulator that merged survival mechanics with grindhouse‑cinema aesthetics—a hybrid that would let him explore his twin passions for movies and games under a single intellectual property.
The first proof‑of‑concept demo was a rough but functional slice of the envisioned world. Dietsch showed it to Abbott, who immediately recognized its potential and introduced it to Dooma, a production partner. Meanwhile, Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, brought a wealth of cross‑media experience. He began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before transitioning to games in the early 2000s, providing writing services for titles such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins through his studio Sekretagent Productions.
In the 2010s he founded several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which later sold for C$430 million (about $330 million USD). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire and enjoy a quiet life. That plan was interrupted when his old Hollywood‑hill roommate, Michael Abbott, called out of the blue.
"A friend of mine had made a video game, and I thought I’d take a look as a courtesy," Wendschuh said. The demo blew his mind and pulled him back into development. He then presented the game to Reid Schneider, a former vice‑president at Warner Bros. Games and current head of Raccoon Logic (the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet).
Schneider joined as a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran programmer from Ubisoft Montreal, to serve as chief technology officer. With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was financing.
The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by an industry downturn that made investors cautious. Initial reactions were positive—"this looks cool"—but securing capital proved difficult. After a first round of outreach, Wolf Haus signed with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles, which helped them refine their pitch and re‑approach investors in 2024. Their persistence paid off when they closed a seed round with Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both taking equity stakes in the studio.
Wendschuh noted that CAA’s representation, which also includes titles like 007: First Light, and the presence of seasoned gaming veterans on the team, were instrumental in winning the deal. Despite the infusion of capital, Wolf Haus deliberately kept the studio lean—only thirteen full‑time staff members at the time of writing. Dietsch emphasized that a small team fosters a collaborative culture where "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 project feasible with limited manpower, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early in development.
"If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explained. The first year of production was therefore split between ideating gameplay and building the internal tools that would allow those ideas to scale across a six‑kilometre‑square open world without collapsing under technical debt. The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools.
"Krafton and Lifelike provided the capital that financed the entire development," Wendschuh said. "We’re now only using a small amount of project finance for marketing; the core game was built entirely with their investment." This structure aligns investor incentives with the studio’s ethos: building reusable tools that not only solve immediate problems but also lay the groundwork for future projects. While this approach can slow short‑term progress, it enables a tiny team to deliver a product that rivals games made by far larger studios.
When asked about the role of generative AI—a hot topic in game development—both Dietsch and Wendschuh were unequivocal: the studio does not employ AI for creative tasks. "We believe a human touch is essential," Dietsch said. "Using an AI to generate assets would defeat the purpose of why we get up every morning to make games." Wendschuh added that the only AI tools they use are mundane productivity aids, such as calendar scheduling and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton, which markets itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required that Wolf Haus refrain from using generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant.
The studio’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s audio and world design. The six‑kilometre‑square map was built entirely by hand, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices. "That was non‑negotiable for us, even as a small indie," Dietsch emphasized.
Dietsch also reflected on the differences between film and game production. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and massive budgets before a director sees the vision on set. In contrast, games allow immediate iteration: "You can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, and see it in action within hours. That immediacy is exhilarating." Wendschuh highlighted that traditional filmmaking is front‑loaded with high‑stakes logistics—securing A‑list talent, negotiating studio greenlights, and navigating distribution channels.
While anyone can shoot a low‑budget movie, breaking through without marquee names is rare. Games, however, have a lower barrier to entry and fewer gatekeepers, making it easier for small teams to achieve commercial success without celebrity endorsement. Both founders trace their creative spark back to childhood.
"When I was six, I wanted to make games or movies; it came down to a coin toss and maybe getting a camera for Christmas," Dietsch recalled. He taught himself programming on a TI‑83 calculator, a skill that later merged with his love of storytelling. He believes that regardless of medium, the core objective remains the same: to craft an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience.
This shared purpose underpins Wolf Haus’s journey from Hollywood film sets to a cutting‑edge game studio, proving that a small, focused team with the right tools and a clear vision can disrupt an industry that often equates size with success.