You may remember seeing the Join Us trailer during the Xbox Showcase in June. The clip introduced a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and the finale hints at Cthulhu‑like tentacles looming in the distance. What didn’t make the cut was the infamous snake‑gun, a feature that CEO and creative director Joe Dietsch of Wolf Haus Games proudly attributes to a youngster’s off‑hand suggestion.
"One of the team members’ kids asked, ‘What would a snake‑gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a new weapon in about thirty minutes, so I built it on the fly. The kid went nuts, and the gun stayed in the final build," Dietsch recalls. That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us – an open‑world sandbox survival game where players can recruit AI followers or friends into a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates why the studio leans heavily on custom tooling: they wanted to deliver a high‑fidelity experience without the massive staff typical of AAA titles.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We set out to be disruptors. Everyone told us you needed a hundred‑person team to pull something like this off. We said no – we could do it with twelve." The claim sounded impossible to outsiders, but the team’s background in low‑budget indie filmmaking gave them confidence. "We come from indie cinema, where you learn to punch well above your weight," Abbott notes.
After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus. The founding trio’s Hollywood pedigree runs deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who now co‑founder 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 banner founded by Chris Roberts before his Star Citizen days. 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 always loved games but felt blocked by the cost of creating something myself," he explains. He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few tiny prototypes, and eventually gravitated toward a doomsday‑cult concept that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. The proof‑of‑concept grew until it caught Abbott’s eye, who then presented it to Dooma, a partner studio.
Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director, entered the picture after a career that spanned film production, screenwriting, and video‑game writing. 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 built several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, a call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the industry.
"I saw the demo Joe had made and it blew my mind, so I came out of retirement," Wendschuh says. He then recruited former Warner Bros. Games VP Reid Schneider as a strategic advisor and hired Ubisoft Montreal veteran Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand as chief technology officer.
Funding proved to be the next hurdle. The team began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn. "People liked what we were building but the market was tough," Dietsch admits.
After initial outreach, Wolf Haus signed with CAA in Los Angeles, which helped them re‑pitch in 2024 and eventually lock in seed money from Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits the CAA connection—alongside seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand—for opening doors that might otherwise have stayed closed. Despite the high‑profile backing, Wolf Haus remains a lean operation of just 13 full‑time staff members. "We entered the project with a clear sense of scope and wanted to keep a small‑team culture where everyone has a voice and touches the creative side," Dietsch says.
To make such an ambitious open‑world game feasible, the studio invested heavily in internal tools early on. "Every system must be scalable and debuggable by a single person. We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a large map without the project collapsing under its own weight," he explains.
Much of the first year was spent simultaneously designing gameplay and engineering the tools that would later make that design possible. The equity financing model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect those tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s investment essentially self‑funded the development.
We’re now adding a modest amount of project finance for marketing, but the core game was built with their equity capital," Wendschuh notes. This structure aligns investor incentives with the studio’s ethos of tool‑driven development: when a problem arises, the team builds a custom solution rather than outsourcing or cutting corners. While this can slow short‑term progress, it enables a tiny team to deliver a AAA‑level experience.
When asked about generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not use it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Turning development over to an AI would defeat why we get up in the morning," Dietsch says.
Wendschuh adds that the only AI they employ are mundane productivity tools for scheduling and email replies. Interestingly, Krafton—publicly positioning itself as an "AI‑first" company—insisted that Wolf Haus remain AI‑free 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 world and audio. 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 mattered to us even as a small indie studio," Wendschuh emphasizes. Dietsch reflects on the differences between film and game creation. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and massive budgets before a director ever sees a scene shot.
In games, the same concept can be prototyped in a single morning within the engine, allowing instant iteration. "You can see your idea instantly and start tweaking it right away," he says, describing the exhilaration of real‑time development. Wendschuh points out that film production is heavily front‑loaded: securing a few high‑profile names often determines whether a project gets green‑lit. While anyone can technically shoot a movie with a cheap camera, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare.
By contrast, the gaming industry has far fewer gatekeepers, making it easier for small teams to reach a broad audience without A‑list talent. Both founders agree that the core creative drive is the same across mediums: to craft an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience.
"When I was six, I wanted to make either games or movies. It boiled down to a coin toss and maybe getting a camera for Christmas.
I learned to program on a TI‑83, so both paths have always felt natural," Dietsch reflects. "Whether it’s a film or a game, you’re delivering an experience and a narrative, and that fundamental goal doesn’t change."