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 teaser, robed cultists ride on pigs, wield machine guns, and the sequence culminates with an image of massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
What viewers didn’t see was the infamous “snake gun,” a weapon that originated from an off‑hand comment by a team member’s child. Joe Dietsch, the chief executive officer and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, recounts the moment: “One of the developers’ sons asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a modular weapon system that let us prototype a new gun in roughly half an hour.
I built a gun that fires snakes, and the kid went nuts. It stayed in the game.” This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival title where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult empire. The game’s design philosophy is tightly linked to the studio’s technology‑first mindset. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, explains that the team set out to be “disruptors”: “We told everyone we could build a AAA‑quality experience with just twelve people.
Most people laughed, saying it was impossible.” Their confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where small crews routinely punch far above their budgetary weight. After a marathon of eighty pitches, Wolf Haus finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the studio. Wolf Haus’s founders are steeped in Hollywood history.
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, a production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to the Star Citizen project. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. The genesis of Join Us can be traced to Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
“I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering after watching YouTube tutorials,” he says. Despite having no formal game‑development training, he built a few modest prototypes before deciding to tackle something larger.
The core concept—a doomsday cult simulator that fuses survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics— appealed to his love of both movies and games. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, hit a technical wall, and showed it to Abbott, who then introduced the project to Dooma. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director, entered the gaming world after a career as a film producer and screenwriter. 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 roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). 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 demo and it blew my mind, so I came out of retirement to help.” He brought on Reid Schneider—former Warner Bros.
Games VP and now head of Raccoon Logic—and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. Funding proved challenging amid a market downturn that began in 2023. The team’s first pitches landed in the summer of that year, and although industry insiders praised the concept, securing capital was difficult.
After enlisting Creative Artists Agency (CAA) as representation, the studio re‑pitched in 2024 and finally closed a seed round with Krafton and Lifelike Capital. Wendschuh credits the CAA connection—whose roster includes titles like 007: First Light—and the presence of seasoned veterans such as Schneider and Chartrand for smoothing the path.
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 everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative process, and to feel ownership of the final product.” To make such a scope feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from day one. “Any system we create must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” he explains.
The first year of development was therefore split between ideating gameplay and constructing the internal toolset that would keep the open‑world map from collapsing under its own weight. The equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike allowed Wolf Haus to self‑fund the entire development cycle, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing. This model aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation: “Our backers want us to build tools that solve problems, even if it slows immediate progress, because those tools enable us to achieve big things with a tiny crew.” When asked about the role of generative AI, Dietsch gives a clear answer: the studio does not employ it for creative work.
“We believe a game needs a human touch. Using an AI to generate core content would defeat why we get up every morning.” Wendschuh adds that the team only uses AI for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting.
Interestingly, Krafton—publicly positioning itself as an “AI‑first” company—explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring similar statements from Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio.
The six‑kilometre‑square map is entirely hand‑crafted, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices. “Even as a small indie, we felt it was essential to preserve that human element,” says Dietsch.
Dietsch also reflects on the differences between film and game production. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise: “You write a script, wait for green‑light, then spend months on set, always needing permission to move forward.” By contrast, games offer immediacy: “You can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly. That instant feedback loop is exhilarating.” Wendschuh notes that film production is front‑loaded with high‑profile talent negotiations, whereas games face fewer gatekeepers: “You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to launch a successful game.” Both mediums, however, share a common creative impulse: delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. Dietsch’s childhood dream of making either movies or games came down to a coin toss, but his early programming on a TI‑83 calculator set him on a path that now blends both worlds.
Join Us stands as a testament to that hybrid vision—a cult‑themed, open‑world sandbox built by a Hollywood‑savvy, tech‑focused team that proved a twelve‑person studio can produce a large‑scale, high‑fidelity title without leaning on generative AI.