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 firing machine guns, culminating in a shot of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What wasn’t shown, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—was the infamous snake gun. "One of the developers’ kids asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a modular weapon system, so within half an hour 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, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can amass followers—or invite friends in co‑op—to build a 1970s‑style cult empire. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a small team to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff.
"We set out to be disruptors," says Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer. "We told everyone we could pull off a AAA‑level experience with just twelve people. Most people laughed, but our background in indie film taught us how to punch far above our weight." The founders’ Hollywood connections run deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who now co‑founders 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 originally founded by Chris Roberts before he moved on to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
Join Us grew out of Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge. I started watching YouTube tutorials and tinkering," he explains. Though he had no formal game‑dev background, Dietsch managed to ship a few small projects before deciding to tackle something bigger: a doomsday cult simulator that fused survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics.
He built a proof‑of‑concept prototype, expecting to hit a technical wall soon. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a production partner that helped refine the vision. The studio’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, 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 that windfall, 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 showed me a prototype that blew my mind and convinced me to come out of retirement." Wendschuh then recruited Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic (the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet), as a strategic advisor. Schneider brought in Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer.
With this core in place, the team turned to financing. Their first round of pitches began in summer 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn. Despite positive reactions to the concept, securing capital proved difficult. After a stint with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and a second wave of pitches in 2024, Wolf Haus closed a seed round with Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both taking equity stakes.
Abbott attributes part of the success to those relationships: "Our CAA agent, Derek Douglas, had represented me for twelve years and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris. That credibility opened doors." The studio’s lean structure—just 13 full‑time staff—was intentional. "We wanted everyone to have a voice and to touch the creative process directly," says Dietsch. To make such an ambitious open‑world possible, the team invested heavily in internal tools early on.
"Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person. We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a six‑kilometre‑square map without the project collapsing under its own weight." Funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed Wolf Haus to develop those tools without external pressure.
"The investors are equity partners, so the money they put in directly finances development. We’ve even used a small amount of project finance for marketing, but the core game is entirely self‑funded through their equity," explains Wendschuh. This model encourages a culture of problem‑solving through bespoke tooling, even if it slows short‑term progress, because it enables a tiny team to deliver a large‑scale experience. When asked about generative AI, Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not employ it in creative production.
"We believe a human touch is essential. Using an AI to generate core content would defeat why we get up every morning," he says. Wendschuh adds that the only AI they use are mundane productivity tools for scheduling and email.
Interestingly, Krafton—publicly branding itself as an "AI‑first" company—insisted that Wolf Haus not rely on generative AI for game creation, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map was built manually, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, a point the team emphasizes as a badge of pride for an indie‑sized operation. Dietsch reflects on the contrast between film and games: "In film, an idea can take years to reach the set, and you need to secure high‑profile talent to get greenlit.
With games, you can prototype an idea in a morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly. That immediacy is exhilarating." Wendschuh notes that while film production is front‑loaded with costly pre‑production and star‑attachment, game development has far fewer gatekeepers, allowing small teams to reach audiences without A‑list names. Both mediums, however, share a core purpose: storytelling and creating experiences. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games—it came down to a coin toss and a camera for Christmas.
I learned programming on a TI‑83, so the passion has always been there. Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re trying to engage an audience, tell a story, and give them an experience. That fundamental drive hasn’t changed," Dietsch concludes.