The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers zip around on pigs, wield machine guns, and ultimately confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One of the most memorable, yet omitted, moments was the appearance of a snake‑shooting weapon.
According to Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, the idea came from a team member’s child. "His son asked, ‘Can there be a snake gun?’ We had a modular weapon system, so within about thirty minutes I built a gun that fires snakes. It blew his mind and it stayed in the final game," Dietsch recalls.
That anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or other players in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult empire. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their philosophy: "We set out to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build a AAA‑level experience with just twelve people.
Most people thought we were crazy." The team’s confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on modest budgets. "Our backgrounds are in indie film, where you learn to punch well above your weight," Abbott explains. After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving Wolf Haus the runway needed to bring Join Us to life.
Wolf Haus’s founders are steeped in Hollywood pedigree. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of actor‑director Mel Gibson, and the two later 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 transition to Star Citizen.
Abbott also produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. The seed of Join Us was planted when Dietsch began experimenting 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 learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," he says.
Though he had no formal game‑dev experience, Dietsch soon crafted a small proof‑of‑concept that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—a doomsday cult simulator that merged his favorite film tropes with interactive gameplay. He presented the demo to Abbott, who recognized its potential and introduced it to Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director.
Wendschuh’s résumé reads like a cross‑section of Hollywood and gaming: early career work as a producer and screenwriter, writing credits for titles such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins via his studio Sekretagent Productions, and later founding several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million. After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote restaurant on a tiny Canadian island, intending to retire. Yet a chance call from his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into development.
"I watched the demo Joe sent me and it blew my mind. It convinced me to come out of retirement," Wendschuh recalls. He then brought on Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, as a strategic advisor, and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer.
With a core team taking shape, the next hurdle was financing during a market downturn. The studio began pitching in summer 2023, initially without representation. After signing with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles, they renewed their outreach in 2024 and eventually closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
Wendschuh believes the CAA connection—alongside advisors like Schneider and Chartrand—was instrumental, noting that his own agent at CAA, Derek Douglas, had represented him during his twelve‑year game‑development career. Despite the high ambitions, Join Us is being built by just thirteen full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team model is intentional: "We wanted a setting where everyone’s voice matters, where each person can touch the creative core, and where the final product feels like it was made by a tightly knit group." To make such an expansive open‑world feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset. "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 massive map without the project collapsing under its own weight," Dietsch explains. The first year of development was therefore split between designing gameplay concepts and constructing the underlying tools that would support them—an approach that also future‑proofs the studio for subsequent projects.
The funding structure further enabled this tool‑centric workflow. Krafton and Lifelike’s equity stakes funded the entire development, allowing Wolf Haus to self‑finance the game while using a modest amount of project finance for marketing later on. "Equity investors are motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they support our heavy investment in tools.
When we hit a problem we don’t know how to solve, we simply build a tool to address it. It may slow us down in the short term, but it empowers a tiny team to create something of this scale," Wendschuh says. When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in the industry—Dietsch gives a clear answer: the studio does not employ it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential.
Using AI to generate assets would defeat why we get up in the morning to make games," he states. Wendschuh adds that the only AI usage is administrative, such as calendar management and email drafting.
Interestingly, Krafton, which has branded itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required that Wolf Haus refrain from using generative AI in its creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. The team’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map is entirely hand‑built, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors—choices Dietsch deems crucial even for an indie‑scale title.
Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between film and game creation. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, star attachments, and studio greenlights. In games, an inspiration can be prototyped within hours, allowing immediate iteration.
"You can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly. That immediacy is exhilarating," he says. Wendschuh notes that film production is front‑loaded with intense, high‑stakes set work, whereas games have fewer gatekeepers. "Anyone can shoot a movie in their backyard, but without big names or distribution, success is rare.
In games, the barriers are lower; you don’t need an A‑list actor or director to reach an audience," he explains. Both founders agree that storytelling is the common thread linking the two mediums. Dietsch recalls his childhood fascination with both games and movies, learning programming on a TI‑83 calculator and dreaming of making either a film or a game.
"Whether you’re crafting a movie or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. That core purpose remains the same," he concludes.