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, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates in a nightmarish vision of Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One detail that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous "snake gun," a weapon that originated from an off‑hand suggestion by a team member’s child.
Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, recalled, “A kid asked if we could make a gun that shoots snakes. Because we built a modular weapon system, I was able to prototype a snake‑shooting gun in roughly half an hour.
The kid was amazed, and the weapon stayed in the game.” That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us. The title is an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult.
The game’s design philosophy is tightly linked to Wolf Haus’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, the studio’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: “We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build a AAA‑level experience with just twelve people. Most people thought we were crazy.” The team’s confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on modest budgets.
Abbott explained, “We come from indie film backgrounds, where you learn to punch well above your weight. We pitched the concept eighty times before securing equity from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold stakes in Wolf Haus.” Wolf Haus’s founders have deep roots in Hollywood.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of actor‑director Mel Gibson, and 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 company originally founded by Chris Roberts before his move to Star Citizen.
Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. The genesis of Join Us can be traced back to Dietsch’s early experiments with Unreal Engine. “Unreal was free to download, and I’d been a gamer and a movie‑buff my whole life, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge,” he said.
He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, built a few small prototypes, and eventually gravitated toward a doomsday‑cult simulation that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. The initial proof‑of‑concept was a rough, ambitious demo that Dietsch showed to Abbott, who then passed it on to Dooma Wendschuh. Wendschuh, who now serves as Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director, began his career as a 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, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which 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 and asked him to look at a game that Joe had built. “The demo blew my mind and pulled me out of retirement,” Wendschuh recalled. Through Wendschuh’s network, the studio recruited Reid Schneider—formerly a vice president at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, the makers of Journey to the Savage Planet—as a strategic advisor, and brought in Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran programmer from Ubisoft Montreal, to serve as chief technology officer. With this core team in place, the next hurdle was financing, which proved difficult amid an industry downturn in the summer of 2023. After an initial round of outreach, Wolf Haus signed with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles and resumed pitching throughout 2024. Their persistence paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed a seed round, providing the capital needed to continue development.
Abbott attributes part of the success to the CAA connection, noting that the agency also represents high‑profile titles like 007: First Light. “Having an agent who knows the gaming landscape and who’s been my representative for twelve years helped open doors,” he said. Despite the high‑profile backing, the studio remains deliberately small—thirteen full‑time employees at the time of writing.
Dietsch explained that a lean team fosters a collaborative environment 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 a sprawling open‑world title feasible for such a compact crew, Wolf Haus invested heavily in internal tooling from day one. “If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” Dietsch said.
“We built a toolkit that lets us iterate quickly and prevents the project from collapsing under its own weight as the world expands.” This tool‑first approach occupied much of the first year of development, running in parallel with core game design. The equity financing model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools without the pressure of short‑term milestones. “Krafton and Lifelike are equity partners; their investment finances the game directly,” Wendschuh explained. “We’re now only using a small amount of project finance for marketing.
The development itself is fully funded by them.” This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term vision, encouraging the continued creation of bespoke tools rather than relying on off‑the‑shelf shortcuts. One such shortcut—generative AI—has been a hot topic across the industry, but Wolf Haus deliberately steers clear of it for creative work. “We don’t use generative AI in the development of the game,” Dietsch asserted.
“The human touch is essential; handing the creative process over to an algorithm defeats the reason we get up each morning.” Wendschuh added that the studio only employs AI for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting, not for art, design, or writing. Interestingly, Krafton, which has publicly positioned itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required that Wolf Haus refrain from using generative AI in its creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. The commitment to human‑crafted content extends to the game’s massive six‑kilometre‑square map and its 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by real actors. “That was non‑negotiable for us, even as a tiny indie,” Dietsch emphasized.
The team believes that preserving jobs for voice talent and artists aligns with their broader creative ethos. Dietsch also reflected on the differences between film and game production.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals from studios, directors, and actors before a single frame is shot. By contrast, games allow for immediate iteration: “You can have an idea at breakfast, drop it into the engine, and see it in action within hours. That immediacy is exhilarating.” Wendschuh noted that while film projects are front‑loaded with intense, high‑stakes set‑ups, games face fewer gatekeepers, making it easier for small teams to achieve success without A‑list talent.
Both mediums, however, share a common creative impulse: storytelling and audience engagement. “When I was six, I wanted to make either games or movies. It came down to a coin toss and a camera for Christmas,” Dietsch recalled.
“I learned to program on a TI‑83, so I’ve always been torn between the two. Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re trying to give someone an experience, tell a story, and pull them in.
The tools change, but the goal stays the same."