You may remember the Join Us trailer that appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June. It showcased a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation where cloaked followers zip around on pigs, unleash machine‑guns, and culminate in a shot of massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the final cut was the infamous snake gun, a detail that Joe Dietsch, CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, proudly points out. "One of the team members’ kids suggested a snake‑gun," Dietsch recalls.
"We had a rapid‑scaling weapon tool, so in about thirty minutes I built a gun that fires snakes. It blew his mind and it’s still in the game today." This anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises – an open‑world sandbox survival where players can recruit followers or co‑op partners into a 1970s‑style cult.
It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a small group to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s COO, explains the team’s philosophy: "We set out to be disruptors.
We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred people; twelve will do.’ Most people thought we were crazy, but our background in indie film taught us how to punch far above our weight." 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 fellow co‑founder. 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 movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s experiments in Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games, but the perceived barrier to creating something was huge," he says. He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few tiny prototypes, and eventually settled on a doomsday cult simulator that merged his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He created a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and Abbott presented it to Dooma. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before transitioning to games in the early 2000s.
He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative work 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 the sale he bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back. "I watched the demo Joe made and it blew my mind, so I came out of retirement," Wendschuh says. He then brought in Reid Schneider, former Warner Bros.
Games VP and now head of Raccoon Logic, as a strategic advisor, and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as CTO. Funding proved challenging during an industry downturn.
The team began pitching in summer 2023, received positive feedback but faced a tough market. They enlisted CAA (Creative Artists Agency) as representation, re‑pitched in 2024, and ultimately closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits CAA’s connections—such as representing 007: First Light—and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for the success. Despite the high ambitions, the studio operates with just 13 full‑time staff.
"We entered the project with a clear sense of scope and wanted a tight‑knit environment where everyone’s voice matters," Dietsch explains. To make a large‑scale game feasible with a small crew, the early months were devoted to building robust internal tools.
"Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," he notes. The team invested heavily in a custom toolkit that could handle open‑world expansion without the project collapsing under its own weight. This tooling philosophy extends to future projects as well. The equity financing model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect those tools.
"Krafton and Lifelike’s investment funds the development directly, making the game essentially self‑funded," says Wendschuh. "We’re now using a bit of project finance for marketing, but the core development was covered by their equity stakes." This structure aligns investor incentives with the studio’s ethos of building reusable tools, even if it slows immediate progress.
When asked about generative AI, Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not employ it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Handing development over to an AI would defeat why we get up each morning," he says. Wendschuh adds that they only use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, not for any artistic contribution.
Interestingly, Krafton—publicly positioning itself as an "AI‑first" company—explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring similar statements from Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The team also insists on fully handcrafted assets. The six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us is hand‑built, and the game features 15,000 voice lines recorded by human actors, a point both founders consider vital for an indie title. Dietsch reflects on the differences between film and games.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring countless approvals and high‑profile talent to secure a greenlight. By contrast, a game idea can be prototyped in a single morning, inserted into the engine, and instantly visualised.
"Games have far fewer gatekeepers; you don’t need an A‑list star or director to get a project off the ground," he observes. Yet he acknowledges that both mediums share a core purpose: delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. "Whether you’re making a movie or a game, you’re creating an experience for someone else," he concludes.