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 zip around on pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and conclude with a monstrous, Cthulhu‑like tentacle spectacle. One element that didn’t make the public cut was the infamous snake‑gun, a quirky weapon that CEO and creative director Joe Dietsch says was born from a child’s imagination.
"My team member’s son asked, ‘What would a snake gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for firearms, so within about thirty minutes I built a gun that actually fires snakes. The kid went wild, and the weapon stayed in the final build," Dietsch recalls. This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game where players can recruit followers—or fellow players—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally demand a far larger staff.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred people; twelve is enough.’ Most people thought we were crazy." Their confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where they learned to achieve cinematic results on shoestring budgets.
After 80 pitch meetings, the studio finally secured equity financing 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, 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 founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated when Dietsch began tinkering with Unreal Engine, drawn by the fact that the engine could be downloaded for free.
"I’d loved games for years, but creating one seemed like a huge barrier. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," he says.
Despite having no formal game‑development background, he eventually conceived a doomsday cult simulator that married his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming it would soon hit a technical wall. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a partner who helped refine the vision.
Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had previously produced and written for films before moving into games in the early 2000s, contributing writing to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. He later founded several tech ventures, including the cannabis‑formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million. After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back.
"Joe sent me a video of his game, and it blew my mind. I came out of retirement to help," Wendschuh recounts. He introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, who became a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer.
Funding proved challenging amid a market downturn in 2023. Initial pitches generated interest but no commitments.
After partnering with CAA in Los Angeles and re‑pitching in 2024, the studio finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh notes that CAA’s representation—also handling titles like 007: First Light—and the presence of veteran industry figures were instrumental in gaining investor confidence. What truly sets Join Us apart is the scale of its production relative to its staff size: just 13 full‑time employees. The team deliberately kept the group small to preserve a collaborative atmosphere where every voice influences the creative direction.
To make such an ambitious open‑world game feasible, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," explains Dietsch. "We spent the first year building the tools that let us prototype ideas while simultaneously ensuring those ideas could expand across a massive map without collapsing under their own weight." The equity funding model gave the studio the runway to perfect these tools.
Krafton and Lifelike’s capital financed development directly, allowing the team to self‑fund the project. While a modest amount of project finance is now earmarked for marketing, the core development costs were covered by the equity partners.
This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the continued building of reusable tools despite the short‑term slowdown they may cause. In an era where many studios tout generative‑AI shortcuts, Wolf Haus deliberately avoids such shortcuts in creative work. "We don’t use generative AI for any part of the game’s design or art," says Dietsch.
"We have a few subscriptions for mundane tasks like calendar management, but the actual creative process is entirely human‑driven." Krafton, despite branding itself as an “AI‑first” company, also insisted that Wolf Haus not rely on generative AI for content creation, mirroring similar stances from other Krafton‑owned studios. The studio’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map was built by hand, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, a point both Dietsch and Wendschuh stress as essential to preserving artistic integrity and protecting creative jobs.
Dietsch reflects on the contrast between filmmaking and game development. In film, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and studio green‑lights. In games, an idea can be prototyped the same day it is imagined: "You can write code in the morning, see it in the engine by lunch, and iterate instantly. That immediacy is exhilarating." Wendschuh adds that while film production is front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations for A‑list talent, games face fewer gatekeepers.
"Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without big names or distribution, success is unlikely. In games, you don’t need an A‑list actor or director; the barrier to entry is lower, making it easier for a small, passionate team to break through." Both founders agree that, whether through movies or games, the core goal remains the same: to craft an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience. Their early fascination with both mediums—programming on a TI‑83 calculator and dreaming of a camera under the Christmas tree—has culminated in Join Us, a testament to how Hollywood sensibilities, entrepreneurial savvy, and a DIY tech ethos can converge to produce a bold, unconventional title without the crutch of generative AI.