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 cultists ride on pigs while firing machine guns, and the sequence culminates with a nightmarish image of Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One of the most memorable, yet omitted, moments was the appearance of a "snake gun," a weapon that actually fires serpents.
Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, explains how that oddity came to be. "One of the developers’ kids suggested, ‘What if there’s a gun that shoots snakes?’" Dietsch recalls. "Because we had built a modular gun system that could be scaled in minutes, I whipped up a snake‑shooting weapon in about half an hour.
The kid was blown away, and the gun stayed in the final build." That anecdote captures 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 join a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’s tech‑first mindset, which has allowed a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity, large‑scale title. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, sums up their philosophy: "We set out to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build a AAA‑ish experience with just twelve people.
Most people laughed and said it was impossible." The team’s confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on modest budgets. "We come from indie film backgrounds, so we’re used to punching well above our weight," Abbott says. After eighty pitch meetings, Wolf Haus finally secured equity funding 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 in California alongside Louie Gibson, son of actor Mel Gibson, who later co‑founded 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, a production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before he moved on to the Star Citizen universe. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx.
Join Us originated from Dietsch’s experimentation in Unreal Engine. "I discovered Unreal was free to download, and despite loving games for years, I felt there was a huge barrier to actually creating something," he says. He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, built a few small prototypes, and eventually settled on the idea of a doomsday cult simulator—a hybrid of survival mechanics and grindhouse cinema that merged his favorite film and game tropes into a single intellectual property.
He created a proof‑of‑concept demo and showed it to Abbott, who then presented it to Dooma, a production partner. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before transitioning to games in the early 2000s.
He founded Sekretagent Productions, which supplied narrative work for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, Wendschuh launched several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a tiny island restaurant in remote Canada, intending to retire and enjoy a quiet life. Yet, in classic Hollywood fashion, an unexpected call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into development.
"I was looking at the video Joe had made, and it completely blew my mind. It convinced me to come out of retirement," Wendschuh says. He introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet.
Schneider joined as a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer. With the core team in place, the next hurdle was financing, which proved difficult amid a market downturn in 2023.
The studio began pitching in the summer of that year, receiving mixed reactions. "People liked the concept but the timing was tough," Dietsch notes. After initial outreach, Wolf Haus signed with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles, re‑engaged in 2024, and eventually closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
Wendschuh believes the CAA connection—whose client list includes titles like 007: First Light—was crucial, as were veteran advisors like Schneider and Chartrand. "My agent at CAA, Derek Douglas, had represented me for twelve years in games and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris," he adds. Despite the high‑profile support, Join Us is being built by just thirteen full‑time staff members. "We entered the project knowing exactly what we wanted to achieve," says Dietsch, emphasizing the studio’s desire to keep a tight‑knit culture where every voice matters and everyone can directly influence the creative direction.
To make an ambitious open‑world title feasible for such a lean crew, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains.
The team devoted a substantial portion of the first development year to building a robust toolkit that could handle the sprawling map, AI, and player‑generated content without collapsing under its own complexity. This tool‑first approach also serves future projects, allowing the studio to reuse and extend the same infrastructure. The funding structure gave the studio the runway to perfect these tools.
Krafton and Lifelike’s equity investment was used to self‑fund the game’s development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing later on. "Equity partners are motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they support our tool‑building ethos," Wendschuh says. "Whenever we encounter a problem we don’t know how to solve, we simply create a tool to address it. It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a small team to deliver a game of this scope." When asked about the role of generative AI—a hot topic in the industry—Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not rely on AI for creative work.
"We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate assets would defeat the purpose of why we love making games," he states. Wendschuh adds that the only AI they employ is for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting, not for art, design, or writing.
Interestingly, Krafton, which has branded itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline. This mirrors a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio that publicly distanced itself from the parent’s AI push. Both founders stress the importance of preserving jobs for voice actors, artists, and other creatives.
The six‑kilometre‑square world of Join Us is handcrafted, and the game features roughly 15,000 voice lines performed by human actors—a point of pride for the team, especially given their indie status. Dietsch reflects on the differences between film and game creation. In film, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and extensive pre‑production before a director ever sees a set. In contrast, a game idea can be prototyped within hours: "You can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, see it instantly, and start iterating.
That immediacy is exhilarating." Wendschuh notes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, high‑stakes set work and a reliance on a handful of marquee talent to secure financing. While anyone can shoot a low‑budget movie with a backyard camera, 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 names, making the medium more accessible for independent creators. Both founders trace their passion back to childhood.
"When I was six, I wanted to make either games or movies. It came down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas," Dietsch laughs. He taught himself programming on a TI‑83 calculator, laying the foundation for a career that now blends cinematic storytelling with interactive design. "Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience.
The core creative impulse is the same." Join Us, with its bizarre weapons, cult‑themed humor, and handcrafted world, exemplifies how a small, Hollywood‑savvy team can defy industry expectations—building a large‑scale, high‑quality game without leaning on generative AI, but instead relying on deep film experience, savvy entrepreneurship, and a relentless focus on custom tools.