You may remember seeing the Join Us trailer during the Xbox Showcase in June. The clip introduced a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash a barrage of machine‑guns, and the finale reveals massive Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the cut, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—was the infamous snake gun.
"One of the team members’ kids came up with the idea and asked, ‘What if there was a snake gun?’ We had a modular weapon system, so in about thirty minutes I built a gun that fires snakes. The kid was blown away, and the weapon stayed in the final build," Dietsch recounts. That anecdote perfectly captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox survival where you can recruit followers—or real‑life co‑op partners—to join your 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a tiny crew to produce 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. "Everyone told us it was impossible to build a game of this scope with only twelve people. But we came from indie filmmaking, where we constantly punch far above our budget," Abbott explains. After 80 pitches, the team finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus.
The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep. 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 he moved on to Star Citizen.
Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us began as a side project for Dietsch while he was tinkering with Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games. The barrier to creating something felt huge, so I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," he says.
Even without prior development experience, he managed to ship a couple of small games before deciding to tackle something bigger. The core concept—a doomsday cult simulator that blends survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—kept pulling him back.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming it would eventually hit a technical wall. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a partner that helped shape the project’s direction. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games 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, including the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million (about $330 million USD). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, planning a quiet retirement. Yet a call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, changed those plans. "He told me a friend had made a video game, sent me a demo, and it blew my mind.
I came out of retirement to help," Wendschuh recalls. He introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, who became a strategic advisor and recruited former Ubisoft Montreal programmer Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand as CTO.
With the core team in place, the next hurdle was financing—a difficult task amid a market downturn in 2023. Initial pitches generated interest but also skepticism. The studio eventually enlisted CAA (Creative Artists Agency) as representation, which, combined with the credibility of veterans like Schneider and Chartrand, helped secure seed funding from Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024. The partnership with CAA proved valuable; their agent Derek Douglas had previously represented Wendschuh during his twelve‑year game‑development career and had headed the video‑game department at William Morris.
What truly sets Join Us apart is its production model: only 13 full‑time staff members. "We entered the project with a clear understanding of scope and wanted to keep a small‑team culture where everyone’s voice matters and everyone touches the creative process," says Dietsch. To make such an ambitious game feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tools early on. "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 open world without the project collapsing," Dietsch explains. Wendschuh notes that the equity funding structure gave them the runway to perfect those tools.
"Krafton and Lifelike’s investment financed the entire development. We’re now adding a modest project‑finance line for marketing, but the core game was built with their equity capital," he says.
The investors also share the studio’s ethos of tool‑driven development, encouraging the team to solve problems by building internal solutions rather than outsourcing. When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in game development—Dietsch gives a blunt answer: "We don’t use any generative AI for creative work. The human touch is essential to us." Wendschuh adds, "We have a few AI subscriptions for scheduling and email replies, but none of that touches the creative pipeline." Interestingly, Krafton, which markets itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the game’s creation.
This mirrors statements from Krafton‑owned Neon Giant, which also distanced itself from the AI pivot. Both Wendschuh and Dietsch stress the importance of preserving jobs for voice actors and artists. The six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us is handcrafted, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human talent—a point of pride for the tiny indie studio.
Dietsch finds game development offers a immediacy that film lacks. "In movies you write a script, wait years, secure funding, then finally shoot. With games, you can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly.
That speed is exhilarating." Wendschuh observes that film production is front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations for A‑list talent, making it hard for a small, unknown project to break through. By contrast, the video‑game market has fewer gatekeepers; a compelling experience can succeed without celebrity names. Ultimately, Dietsch believes the creative impulse behind both mediums is the same: to tell a story, evoke emotion, and give an audience an unforgettable experience. Whether through a camera lens or a game engine, the goal remains to craft a world that draws people in and leaves a lasting impression.