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 pigs while firing machine guns, culminating in a nightmarish vision of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One detail that didn’t make the final edit was the infamous snake gun, a quirky weapon that emerged from an off‑hand suggestion by a team member’s child. "He asked, ‘Can we have a snake‑shooting gun?’" recalls Joe Dietsch, the studio’s CEO and creative director.
"Because we had built a modular gun system, I could prototype a snake‑launcher in roughly thirty minutes. The kid was thrilled, and the weapon stayed in the game." That anecdote perfectly captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit of Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival title where players can recruit followers—or teammates in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult.
It also illustrates why Wolf Haus Games leans heavily on custom tooling: the studio has managed to produce a high‑fidelity, content‑rich experience with a development roster that never exceeds a dozen full‑time staff. Michael Abbott, the company’s chief operating officer, summed up the philosophy: "We set out to be disruptors. While everyone told us a twelve‑person team couldn’t deliver a game of this scope, we knew from indie‑film experience that small crews can punch well above their weight." The journey to funding was anything but smooth.
After roughly eighty pitch meetings, Wolf Haus finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital. Both investors took a stake in the studio, allowing the team to retain creative control while gaining the capital needed to finish the game.
Wolf Haus’s leadership team is steeped in Hollywood history. 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 company founded by Chris Roberts before his shift to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx.
This cinematic lineage informs the studio’s narrative ambition and its willingness to experiment with genre‑bending concepts. The genesis of Join Us can be traced back to Dietsch’s early experiments with Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d spent my life watching movies and playing games, but the barrier to actually making something felt huge," he explains.
He began learning the engine through YouTube tutorials, eventually creating a handful of small prototypes. One idea kept resurfacing: a doomsday cult simulator that fused survival mechanics with grindhouse‑film aesthetics. The concept felt like a natural bridge between his love of cinema and interactive entertainment. Dietsch built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming he would soon encounter an insurmountable technical wall.
He showed the prototype to Abbott, who recognized its potential and introduced it to Dooma, a production partner. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had a diverse background that spanned film production, screenwriting, and video‑game narrative design. In the early 2000s he founded Sekretagent Productions, providing writing services for titles such as 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 selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote restaurant on a tiny Canadian island, intending to retire. Yet, in classic Hollywood fashion, a call from his former roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the industry.
"I was looking at a video game Joe had made, and it blew my mind. It convinced me to come out of retirement," Wendschuh says. He then recruited Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games vice‑president now heading Raccoon Logic, to serve as strategic advisor, and brought on Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer.
With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was financing during a market downturn. The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by industry contraction. Initial outreach yielded interest but no commitments.
After partnering with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles, Wolf Haus returned to the pitch circuit in 2024, eventually closing a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits CAA’s representation—alongside the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand—for opening doors that might otherwise have remained shut. Despite the high‑profile backing, the studio deliberately kept its headcount low, operating with just thirteen full‑time employees. "We wanted a small‑team atmosphere where every voice matters and everyone can touch the creative core," Dietsch notes.
To make such an ambitious project feasible, the studio invested heavily in internal tooling from day one. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," he explains. The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and building the underlying tools that would later allow the world to expand without collapsing under its own complexity. Funding from Krafton and Lifelike was structured as equity, meaning the studio could self‑finance the bulk of development.
"The investors are motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they support our tool‑building ethos," says Wendschuh. This approach gave Wolf Haus the freedom to pause and craft bespoke solutions whenever a technical roadblock appeared, even if it slowed short‑term progress. The result is a six‑kilometre‑square open world, entirely handcrafted, and a script containing roughly 15,000 voice lines recorded by human actors—no synthetic voices. When asked about generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not employ it for creative tasks.
"We believe a human touch is essential to game development," Dietsch says. "Using AI to generate content would undermine the very reason we get up every morning." Wendschuh adds that the studio only uses AI‑powered tools for mundane administrative duties like calendar management and email drafting. Krafton, despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, echoing similar statements from other Krafton‑owned studios.
The decision to eschew AI aligns with the studio’s broader philosophy of preserving jobs for voice actors, artists, and other creatives. "Generative AI threatens the livelihoods of the people who make games feel alive," Wendschuh argues. This stance resonates with the team’s commitment to handcrafted quality, from hand‑modeled environments to fully human‑performed dialogue.
Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between filmmaking and game development. In film, an idea can take years to materialise, subject to the whims of studios, directors, and actors. In games, the same concept can be prototyped within hours, allowing immediate iteration. "You can have an idea at breakfast and see it in the engine by lunch," he says, highlighting the immediacy that attracted him to interactive media.
While both mediums share a common creative impulse—to tell stories and evoke emotions—the barriers to entry differ dramatically. Film still relies heavily on marquee talent and distribution deals, whereas games offer a more democratized path to success. "You don’t need an A‑list star or director to launch a hit game," Dietsch observes, noting that the low gate‑keeping in the gaming world makes it an attractive arena for independent creators. In summary, Wolf Haus’s Join Us exemplifies how a small, Hollywood‑savvy team can leverage custom tools, strategic funding, and a steadfast commitment to human‑crafted content to produce a sprawling, high‑quality game without resorting to generative AI.
Their story underscores the power of interdisciplinary experience, the importance of a clear vision, and the potential for disruption when a dozen passionate developers set out to defy industry expectations.