The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, giving viewers 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 terrifying vision of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
What the audience didn’t see was the infamous "snake gun," a weapon that originated from a spontaneous suggestion by a team member’s child. According to Joe Dietsch, CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, the idea was pitched during a casual conversation: “One of our team member’s sons asked, ‘Can there be a snake gun?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for firearms, so within about thirty minutes I built a gun that shoots snakes.
It blew his mind, and we kept it in the final build.” This anecdote encapsulates the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises. Set in an open‑world sandbox, the title lets players recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult.
The game’s design philosophy is heavily technology‑driven, enabling a high‑fidelity experience to be delivered by a surprisingly small crew. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up the ambition: “We wanted to be disruptors. Everyone told us a twelve‑person team couldn’t pull off a game of this scale, but we proved them wrong.” The founders lean on a rich history of indie filmmaking, where doing more with less is the norm. “We come from indie film backgrounds and we’re used to punching well above our weight,” Abbott explained.
After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus. Wolf Haus’s leadership team is steeped in Hollywood pedigree. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of 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 house founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to the Star Citizen project.
Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. The genesis of Join Us traces back to Dietsch tinkering with Unreal Engine. “Unreal Engine was free to download, and I’d always loved games, but there seemed to be a huge barrier to actually creating something,” he said.
He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few modest prototypes, and eventually gravitated toward a doomsday cult simulator—a concept that married his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and the duo began pitching the vision.
Dooma Wendschuh, the studio’s chief financial officer and narrative director, entered the picture after a varied career that spanned film production, screenwriting, and video‑game writing. 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 launched several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, a call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into game development. Impressed by Dietsch’s demo, Wendschuh helped bring on Reid Schneider—former Warner Bros.
Games VP—and Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as strategic advisor and chief technology officer respectively. Funding proved to be the next hurdle. The team began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn. Initial interest was positive but converting that interest into capital was difficult.
After partnering with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and re‑pitching in 2024, Wolf Haus closed a seed round with Krafton and Lifelike Capital. Wendschuh credits the CAA connection—alongside the credibility of veterans like Schneider and Chartrand—for opening doors that might otherwise have remained shut. Despite the high‑profile backers, Join Us remains a product of a lean operation: only 13 full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team mindset was intentional: “We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative process, and to feel ownership over a game that truly reflects a specific group of people.” To make such an ambitious open‑world title feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early on. “If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” Dietsch explained. The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and building the internal tools that would later allow the world to expand without collapsing under its own complexity.
The equity‑funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools. Krafton and Lifelike’s investments were used to self‑fund the game's development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing. This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the team to keep building reusable tools even when it slows short‑term progress. When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in game development—Dietsch gave a blunt answer: the studio does not use it for creative work.
“We believe a human touch is essential. Turning development over to an AI would defeat the reason we get up every morning,” he said.
Wendschuh added that the only AI tools they employ are mundane productivity aids, such as calendar scheduling and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton, which has publicly positioned itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the 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 massive six‑kilometre‑square map and its 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by human actors.
Dietsch stresses that this decision was non‑negotiable, even for an indie studio with limited resources. Comparing his experiences in film and games, Dietsch notes the immediacy of the latter medium.
In film, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring countless approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours, allowing creators to see their vision come to life almost instantly. Wendschuh observes that while filmmaking is front‑loaded with intense, high‑stakes production phases, game development offers a more democratized path: “Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without big names or distribution, success is unlikely.
In games, the gatekeepers are far fewer, so a small, passionate team can actually break through.” Both mediums, however, share a common creative impulse: storytelling and immersive experience. Dietsch reflects on his childhood, recalling a coin toss that determined whether he would pursue games or movies.
He learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator and eventually discovered that, whether through film or interactive entertainment, the goal is to engage an audience, tell a story, and deliver an experience that resonates. Join Us stands as a testament to what a focused, technically adept, and creatively driven team can achieve without relying on massive headcounts or generative AI.
By leveraging Hollywood connections, smart financing, and a toolbox built from the ground up, Wolf Haus is delivering a bold, quirky cult simulator that promises both chaos and craftsmanship, all while keeping the human element at its core.