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 zip around on pigs, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with a massive, Cthulhu‑like tangle of tentacles. One element that didn’t make the final edit was the infamous "snake gun," a quirky weapon that originated from an off‑hand suggestion by a developer’s child.
As Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, recounts, "My team member’s son asked, ‘Can there be a snake gun?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a new weapon in about thirty minutes, so I built a gun that fires snakes. He was blown away, and the weapon stayed in the game." That anecdote perfectly captures the chaotic, sandbox‑style gameplay that Join Us promises. Players will navigate an open‑world survival environment, recruiting followers—or inviting friends into co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult empire. The experience is as much about absurdist fun as it is about strategic resource management, and it reflects the studio’s broader philosophy: lean teams can produce ambitious, high‑fidelity experiences if they focus on robust, reusable tools.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up the team’s mindset: "We wanted to be disruptors. Everyone told us a twelve‑person crew couldn’t build a game of this scope, that it was impossible. But we came from indie‑film backgrounds where we routinely punched far above our weight, so we knew we could make it happen." After roughly eighty pitch meetings, the studio finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving the project the financial runway it needed. 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 the Star Citizen universe.
Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. This blend of cinematic storytelling and production savvy informs the game’s narrative tone and visual style. Join Us began as a personal experiment in Unreal Engine. "I discovered that Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt the barrier to entry for creating something was huge," Dietsch explains.
He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, built a few small prototypes, and eventually settled on the idea of a doomsday cult simulator—a concept that merged his love of grindhouse cinema, survival mechanics, and dark comedy into a single intellectual property. The proof‑of‑concept was rough but promising. Dietsch showed the demo to Abbott, who immediately recognized its potential and presented it to Dooma, a production partner. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had previously worked as a producer and screenwriter in Hollywood before transitioning to games in the early 2000s.
He founded Sekretagent Productions, contributing writing to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, he built a cannabis formulation company, Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million (about $330 million USD). After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, Wendschuh was lured back into development when his old Hollywood‑hill roommate, Michael Abbott, called to share Joe’s game demo. "It blew my mind and pulled me out of retirement," Wendschuh recalls.
To strengthen the studio’s leadership, they recruited Reid Schneider—formerly a vice‑president at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, the makers of Journey to the Savage Planet—as a strategic advisor. Schneider also brought on Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer. With this talent pool in place, the next hurdle was financing, which proved difficult during the industry downturn of 2023‑24.
The team persisted, leveraging their representation at Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and eventually closing a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. The partnership with CAA, which also represents high‑profile titles like 007: First Light, proved invaluable.
Derek Douglas, Wolf Haus’s agent at CAA, had previously represented Wendschuh during his twelve‑year game‑development career and had headed the video‑game department at William Morris. This network helped the studio secure the equity funding that allowed them to keep the team small while still delivering a large‑scale product.
Wolf Haus now operates with just thirteen full‑time employees. Dietsch emphasizes that the modest headcount is intentional: "We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative process, and to feel ownership over the final product." To make such an ambitious open‑world possible, the studio invested heavily in internal tool development from day one. "If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch notes. By building a flexible toolkit early, they ensured that as features expanded across the six‑kilometre‑square map, the project wouldn’t collapse under its own weight.
The funding model reinforced this approach. Krafton and Lifelike’s equity stakes meant the studio could self‑fund development, using the capital solely for production rather than external loans. "Equity investors are motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they support us in building extensive tools," says Wendschuh.
"Whenever we hit a problem we don’t know how to solve, we create a tool to address it. It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a tiny team to produce a game of this magnitude." Despite the industry’s growing fascination with generative AI, Wolf Haus deliberately avoids using it for creative tasks. "We believe a human touch is essential in game development," Dietsch asserts. "Turning the creative process over to an AI would defeat the reason we get up every morning." Wendschuh adds that the studio only employs generative AI for mundane administrative duties like calendar management and email drafting.
"We have no AI involvement in art, design, or writing," he confirms. Interestingly, Krafton—positioned as an "AI‑first" company—insisted that Wolf Haus refrain from using 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 map and voice work. The entire six‑kilometre‑square world was built by hand, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, a point the developers consider non‑negotiable even for an indie‑scale project. Dietsch reflects on the contrast between film and game creation.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring countless approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent before a studio greenlights production. In games, however, an idea can be prototyped in a single morning, placed directly into the engine, and iterated upon instantly. "That immediacy is exhilarating," he says.
Wendschuh agrees, noting that film production is heavily front‑loaded with pre‑production logistics, whereas games allow for rapid experimentation without the same gatekeeping structures. Both mediums, though, share a core purpose: delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. Dietsch’s childhood fascination with both movies and video games—spurred by a Christmas camera and programming on a TI‑83—underscores that shared creative impulse. Whether through a cult‑building simulator or a feature film, the goal remains the same: to craft a memorable narrative that resonates with players and viewers alike.