You may remember that the Join Us trailer made a splash during the Xbox Showcase in June, presenting a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation where robed followers ride pigs, unleash machine‑guns, and the final frame hints at colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t appear in that cut was the infamous snake‑gun, a quirky weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a youngster’s off‑hand suggestion. "One of the team members’ kids asked, ‘What would a snake‑gun look like?’" Dietsch recounts. "Because we had a modular gun system, I could whip up a prototype in about thirty minutes.
The kid went nuts, and the weapon stayed in the final build." That anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox survival where you can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s tech‑first philosophy, which has let a tiny crew deliver a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff.
"We set out to be disruptors," says Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer. "We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred hands; twelve people can handle this.’ Most people laughed and called us crazy. But we’ve been punching above our weight since our indie‑film days," Abbott adds.
After 80 pitches, the team finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold stakes in Wolf Haus. The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—Mel Gibson’s son and another Wolf Haus co‑founder—and together they 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 he moved on to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated when Dietsch began tinkering with Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games, but the barrier to actually building something felt huge. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and just experimenting," he explains. Despite lacking formal training, he produced a few small prototypes before deciding to tackle something bigger—a doomsday cult simulator that merged his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept, expecting to hit a technical wall at some point.
When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter immediately took it to Dooma, a partner studio. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, began his career as a producer and screenwriter before shifting to games in the early 2000s, founding Sekretagent Productions, which contributed writing to 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, sold for C$430 million (about $330 million USD). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire and walk his dog on the beach. Yet, in classic Hollywood fashion, an unexpected call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back. "I was shown a video game that Joe had built, and it blew my mind.
It convinced me to come out of retirement," he says. He then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games vice president now heading Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet.
Schneider joined as a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer. With the core team in place, the next hurdle was funding—particularly difficult during the industry downturn of 2023. The studio began pitching in the summer of that year, receiving positive but cautious feedback. After enlisting CAA (Creative Artists Agency) as representation and re‑pitching in 2024, they finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
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. "Derek Douglas, our CAA agent, had represented me during my twelve‑year game‑making career and previously led the video‑game department at William Morris," Wendschuh notes. Regardless of pedigree, Join Us is remarkable for being built by just 13 full‑time staff.
"We entered the project with a clear sense of scope and a desire to keep the team small, so every voice mattered and everyone touched the creative process," says Dietsch. To make such an ambitious game feasible, the studio invested heavily in internal tooling early on.
"Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person. We built a robust toolkit so that as features spread across the open world, the project wouldn’t collapse under its own weight," he explains.
The first year was thus split between ideating gameplay and constructing the tools that would enable those ideas. The equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed the studio to self‑finance development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing. "Because our investors hold equity, they’re motivated to see the studio’s enterprise value grow, which aligns with our philosophy of building extensive tools rather than cutting corners," Wendschuh says.
"When we encounter a problem we can’t solve, we simply build a tool to address it. It may slow us down short‑term, but it empowers a tiny team to achieve big results." When asked about generative AI, Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not employ it in creative production. "We believe a human touch is essential.
Handing development over to an AI would defeat the very reason we get up each morning," he says. Wendschuh adds that while the team uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, it never touches the artistic side of the game. Krafton, despite branding itself as an “AI‑first” company, also insisted that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI for creative work, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant.
"Our investors wanted assurance we weren’t relying on AI to make the game," Wendschuh explains. Both founders stress that AI threatens jobs for voice actors and artists, a concern they take seriously.
Consequently, the six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us is handcrafted, and the game’s 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human performers. Dietsch highlights a key advantage of game development over film: immediacy. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring scripts, green‑lights, and lengthy production schedules.
In games, an idea can be prototyped in a single morning, inserted into the engine, and instantly visualised. "You can see it, touch it, iterate on it right away. That immediacy is exhilarating," he says. Wendschuh notes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense set work and a reliance on securing a handful of high‑profile talent to get studio approval.
While anyone can shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without marquee names or distribution is rare. By contrast, the barriers to releasing a successful game are lower; you don’t need an A‑list actor or director to attract an audience.
Both founders agree that the core creative impulse—telling stories and delivering experiences—remains the same across mediums. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games.
It boiled down to a coin toss and maybe getting a camera for Christmas. I learned to program on a TI‑83, so I’ve always been drawn to both," Dietsch reflects. "Whether it’s film or a game, you’re crafting an experience, a narrative, and engaging the audience. The medium changes, but the goal stays constant."