The trailer for Join Us first caught many eyes during the Xbox Showcase in June, presenting a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers ride pig‑mounted platforms, unleash machine‑gun fire, and eventually confront massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One quirky detail that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous "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 sprang from a child’s imagination.
"One of our team member’s sons asked, ‘What would a snake‑gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us scale a gun model in minutes, so I built a functional snake‑shooter in about half an hour. The kid went nuts, and we kept it in the game," Dietsch recalls.
This anecdote epitomises the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style doomsday cult. It also showcases the studio’s tech‑first philosophy, which has enabled a high‑fidelity, large‑scale experience to be produced by a remarkably small crew. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors. Everyone told us you need a hundred‑person team to pull off something like this.
We said, ‘No, twelve is enough.’" Their confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where small budgets and lean crews are the norm. "We’re used to punching well above our weight," Abbott added.
After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus. The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who now co‑foundes 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 company founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
This blend of cinematic experience and entrepreneurial grit set the tone for their venture into interactive media. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d been a gamer forever, but creating something felt out of reach. I started watching YouTube tutorials and tinkering," he explains.
Despite lacking formal game‑development training, he built several small prototypes before deciding to tackle a larger vision: a doomsday cult simulator that fuses survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He created a proof‑of‑concept demo and showed it to Abbott, who then presented it to Dooma, a production partner. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director, entered the gaming world after a career in film production and screenwriting.
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, he bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a chance call from his former roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the industry. "I saw the demo Joe had built and it blew my mind.
It convinced me to come out of retirement," Wendschuh says. Through Abbott’s connections, Wolf Haus recruited Reid Schneider—formerly a vice‑president at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet—as a strategic advisor. Schneider then 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, a challenge made tougher by a market downturn in 2023. The studio initially pitched independently, later partnering with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles for broader outreach. After a second round of pitches in 2024, they closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. The CAA relationship proved valuable.
"Derek Douglas, our agent at CAA, had represented me during my twelve‑year game‑development career and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris," Wendschuh notes. This industry clout, combined with the expertise of Schneider and Chartrand, helped convince investors that a twelve‑person team could deliver a AAA‑level experience. Wolf Haus’s development philosophy centers on tool‑building.
"If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. Early in the project, the studio invested heavily in creating a robust toolkit that could support an expansive open world without collapsing under its own weight. This approach meant that the first year of development was split between ideating gameplay concepts and engineering the underlying tools—a dual effort that also future‑proofs the studio for subsequent projects. Funding from Kraftor and Lifelike allowed Wolf Haus to self‑finance the core development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing later on.
"Equity partners want the studio to increase its enterprise value, so they encourage us to build extensive tools," says Wendschuh. "When we encounter a problem we can’t solve, we simply build a custom tool.
It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a tiny team to achieve something massive." Despite the industry buzz around generative AI, Wolf Haus deliberately avoids it in the creative pipeline. "We don’t use generative AI for any artistic work.
Our process relies on human creativity and craftsmanship," Dietsch asserts. Wendschuh adds that the studio only uses AI for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting.
Interestingly, Krafton—an "AI‑first" company—explicitly required that Wolf Haus not employ generative AI for game creation as a condition of their investment, mirroring similar stances taken by other Krafton‑owned studios such as Neon Giant. The commitment to human‑made content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map of Join Us was handcrafted, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by professional actors rather than AI‑generated voices.
"That level of authenticity mattered to us, even as an indie studio," Dietsch emphasizes. Transitioning from film to games offered Dietsch a new sense of immediacy. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise: "You write a script, wait for green‑light, then spend years filming and editing before you see the final product." By contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours: "You have an idea this morning, you drop it into the engine, see it instantly, and start iterating right away. That speed is exhilarating." Wendschuh points out that film production is heavily front‑loaded, requiring the attachment of high‑profile talent before a studio will commit resources.
While anyone can technically shoot a low‑budget movie, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare. Games, however, have fewer gatekeepers; a small team can reach a global audience without A‑list actors or directors. This democratization is a key reason why Wolf Haus believes a twelve‑person studio can compete with much larger developers. Both founders reflect on their childhood fascination with storytelling, whether through movies or interactive experiences.
"When I was six, I wanted to make either games or movies. It boiled down to a coin toss and getting a camera for Christmas. I learned to program on a TI‑83, so the love for both mediums grew together," Dietsch says.
Ultimately, he believes the core mission is the same: to craft compelling experiences, tell stories, and engage audiences—regardless of the medium. Join Us stands as a testament to what a lean, tech‑savvy, Hollywood‑infused team can achieve when they combine daring creativity with disciplined tool development, all while consciously rejecting the shortcut of generative AI in favour of genuine human artistry.