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 charge on pig‑back while wielding machine guns, and the sequence culminates in a nightmarish vision of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the edit was the infamous "snake gun," a weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was inspired by a child’s off‑hand suggestion.
"One of our team members’ sons asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for firearms, so within about thirty minutes I built a gun that launches snakes. The kid went wild, and the weapon stayed in the final build," Dietsch recalls.
That anecdote captures the chaotic, sandbox‑style gameplay that Join Us promises. Players are invited to establish a 1970s‑style cult, recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—and survive in an open‑world environment that encourages both creative experimentation and ruthless competition.
The game’s design philosophy mirrors the studio’s broader approach: lean, tool‑centric, and deliberately disruptive. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed it up: "We set out to prove you don’t need a hundred‑person studio to craft a high‑fidelity, content‑rich experience. Twelve people, that’s all we aimed for.
Everyone told us it was impossible, but we had a track record of punching well above our weight." The team’s confidence stems from a history of delivering big‑scale projects on shoestring budgets. Before Join Us, the founders cut their teeth in independent film, where limited resources are the norm and ingenuity is essential. "We grew up making indie movies, constantly stretching every dollar," Abbott explains.
After a marathon of 80 pitches, Wolf Haus finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the studio. The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson—who later co‑founded Wolf Haus and co‑wrote the feature films 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 transition to the Star Citizen universe.
Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx, further cementing the studio’s cinematic roots. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s experimentation with Unreal Engine.
"I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering after watching countless YouTube tutorials," he says. Though he had never built a commercial game before, he managed to produce a couple of small prototypes before committing to a larger vision. The core concept—a doomsday cult simulator that blends survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—allowed him to fuse his two passions: movies and interactive entertainment. The proof‑of‑concept demo was a modest but ambitious sandbox that Dietsch presented to Abbott, who then introduced it to Dooma Wendschuh.
Wendschuh, the studio’s chief financial officer and narrative director, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into 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 built several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million).
After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh retired to a remote Canadian island, planning a quiet life of beach walks and dog‑walking. That plan was interrupted when his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, called with an unexpected opportunity.
"He said a friend had made a video game and wanted my opinion. I watched the demo, it blew my mind, and I came out of retirement," Wendschuh recounts. He then brought the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, who agreed to act as strategic advisor. Schneider recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran programmer from Ubisoft Montreal, to serve as chief technology officer. With a core leadership team in place, Wolf Haus turned to funding.
The summer of 2023 was a difficult period for the industry, marked by a downturn that made investors cautious. Still, the team’s unique blend of Hollywood credibility, proven tech expertise, and a compelling pitch helped them break through. After initial outreach, they signed with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles, which facilitated a second wave of pitches in 2024.
Their persistence paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed the seed round, providing the capital needed to flesh out the game. The involvement of CAA—also representing titles like 007: First Light—proved invaluable, as did the presence of seasoned game veterans Schneider and Chartrand. "My agent Derek Douglas, who handled my game work for twelve years, also heads the video‑game department at William Morris," Wendschuh notes, underscoring how industry connections smoothed the path to investment. Despite the high aspirations, the studio remains deliberately small: thirteen full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the limited headcount is a conscious choice, designed to keep the creative process intimate and collaborative. "Everyone has a voice, everyone touches the creative, and the game feels like it was made by a tightly knit group," he says.
To make a large‑scale open‑world title feasible with such a lean crew, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling from day one. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay features and building the internal toolset that would allow those features to proliferate across a six‑kilometre‑square map without collapsing under technical debt.
This tool‑first philosophy also aligns with the studio’s equity‑funded model: investors are motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they support the time‑intensive process of building reusable tools. The funding structure has allowed Wolf Haus to self‑finance the core development, using equity capital from Krafton and Lifelike. While a modest amount of project finance is earmarked for marketing, the bulk of the game’s creation has been covered by the investors’ equity stakes.
"Equity partners want the studio to succeed long‑term, so they encourage us to build robust tools rather than cut corners," Wendschuh says. When asked about the role of generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not employ it for any creative tasks. "We believe a human touch is essential for game development. Using AI to generate content would undermine why we love making games," Dietsch states.
Wendschuh adds that the only AI tools they use are mundane productivity aids for calendar management and email drafting—not for art, design, or writing. Interestingly, Krafton, which markets itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required that Wolf Haus refrain from using generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game's massive map and its 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by human actors.
"Every square metre of the world is hand‑built, and every line of dialogue is performed by real people," Dietsch affirms. This dedication reflects the studio’s broader philosophy that creative work should remain a human endeavour, preserving jobs for voice talent and artists.
Dietsch also highlights a key advantage of games over film: immediacy. In cinema, a concept can take years to materialize, requiring layers of approval and massive budgets before a single frame is shot. In contrast, a game idea can be prototyped within hours, allowing developers to see their vision in real time.
"You can have an idea at breakfast and test it in the engine by lunch," he says, describing the exhilarating feedback loop that keeps the team motivated. Wendschuh points out that filmmaking is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, high‑stakes production phases that depend on securing a handful of A‑list talent to greenlight a project. While anyone can technically shoot a video with a backyard camera, breaking through without marquee names or distribution deals is rare. By comparison, the video‑game market has far fewer gatekeepers, making it more accessible for small, independent studios to achieve commercial success.
Both founders agree that the core creative impulse—telling stories and delivering experiences—remains the same across mediums. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games; it came down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas," Dietsch reflects. "Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re crafting an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience.
The tools change, but the heart of the work stays the same."