The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator. In the clip, robed followers charge on pig‑mounted platforms, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with a vision of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the final cut was the infamous "snake gun," a weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a child’s off‑hand suggestion.
"One of the developers’ kids asked, ‘What would a snake‑gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us scale a weapon in minutes, so I whipped up a snake‑shooting gun in about half an hour. The kid went nuts, and the gun stayed in the game," Dietsch recalls.
This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival title where players can recruit followers—or other players in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a small team to produce a high‑fidelity experience that would normally require a much 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 history of achieving big results on modest budgets.
"We come from indie filmmaking, where you constantly have to punch above your weight," Abbott says. After 80 pitch meetings, the studio finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus. The founding trio brings deep Hollywood connections to the table.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson—and the two later co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie films Happy Hunting and Manifest West. Abbott is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, a production company founded by Chris Roberts before he turned his attention to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated when Dietsch began experimenting with Unreal Engine, attracted by the fact that the engine could be downloaded for free.
"I’d loved games for years, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," he explains. Though he had no prior development experience, Dietsch quickly moved from those modest experiments to a full‑blown proof‑of‑concept for a doomsday cult simulator—a concept that fused his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics.
The prototype impressed Abbott, who then presented it to Dooma, a production partner. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had previously worked as a producer and screenwriter in film before transitioning to games in the early 2000s.
He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing writing services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, he launched several tech ventures, including the cannabis‑formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million. After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote restaurant on a tiny Canadian island, intending to retire.
Yet a call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back. "I saw the demo Joe had built, and it blew my mind. It convinced me to come out of retirement," he says. Wendschuh then recruited Reid Schneider—former VP at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic—to serve as strategic advisor, and he brought on Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With the core team in place, the next hurdle was financing, a task made tougher by an industry downturn that began in 2023. The studio pitched throughout the summer, eventually signing with CAA in Los Angeles and returning to investors in 2024. Their persistence paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed the seed round.
Abbott credits the CAA connection and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for smoothing the path. "Derek Douglas, our CAA agent, was also my agent when I was making games for twelve years and he once headed the video‑game department at William Morris," Abbott notes. Despite the high ambitions, Join Us is being built by just 13 full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small size is intentional: "We wanted a studio where everyone has a voice, everyone touches the creative process, and the game feels like a product of a tight‑knit group." To make such a scope feasible, the team invested heavily in custom tooling early on.
"Every system must be scalable and debuggable by a single person. We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive open world without the project collapsing under its own weight," Dietsch explains.
In practice, the first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and engineering the tools that would later enable those ideas. The equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed the studio to self‑finance the development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing.
"Our investors are incentivized to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they support us in building extensive tools. When we hit a problem we can’t solve, we simply create a tool to address it. It may slow us down, but it lets a tiny team achieve something that would otherwise require dozens of people," Wendschuh says. When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in game development—the team’s answer was unequivocal: they do not rely on it for creative work.
"We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate content would defeat the purpose of why we love making games," Dietsch states. Wendschuh adds that the only AI they employ is for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Even Krafton, which has publicly positioned itself as an "AI‑first" company, insisted that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in its creative pipeline.
This mirrors the stance of Krafton‑owned Neon Giant, which also distanced itself from AI‑driven development. Both studios argue that AI threatens jobs for voice actors and artists—a concern shared by Wolf Haus, which hand‑crafted the six‑kilometre‑square map and recorded all 15,000 voice lines with real performers. Dietsch reflects on the contrast between film and games, noting the immediacy of interactive media. "In film you write a script, wait years, get approvals, and finally shoot.
In games you can have an idea this morning and see it in the engine by afternoon," he says. Wendschuh agrees, observing that filmmaking is heavily front‑loaded with securing A‑list talent and studio greenlights, whereas games face far fewer gatekeepers. "You don’t need a Hollywood star to make a successful game; the barrier to entry is much lower," he explains. Both mediums, however, share a core creative drive: storytelling and delivering an experience.
"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. I learned to program on a TI‑83, so I’ve always been drawn to both," Dietsch concludes.
"Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re trying to tell a story, engage an audience, and create an experience—that’s the common thread that unites the two crafts."