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, wielding machine guns, before the screen fades to a nightmarish vision of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One detail that didn’t make the final edit was the infamous "snake gun," a weapon that originated from an off‑hand comment by a team member’s son.
Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, recalled the moment: “My colleague’s kid asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototype tool for weapons, so within half an hour I built a gun that launches snakes. He was thrilled, and the weapon stayed in the game.” That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival title where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has enabled a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity experience that would normally require a much larger staff. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: “We set out to be disruptors.
Everyone told us a twelve‑person team couldn’t deliver a game of this scope, but we knew from indie filmmaking that a lean crew can punch well above its weight.” The Wolf Haus founders bring a deep Hollywood pedigree to the table. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who later co‑founded the studio. The pair 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 films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us began as a personal experiment in Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt there was a huge barrier to actually creating something," Dietsch explained. He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, built a few tiny prototypes, and eventually settled on the concept of a doomsday cult simulator—a mash‑up of survival mechanics, grindhouse cinema aesthetics, and the narrative freedom of games.
He created a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and the two took the concept to Dooma, a production partner. The studio’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, transitioned from film to games in the early 2000s, founding Sekretagent Productions, which supplied writing for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. He later built several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis‑formulation company Ebbu, sold for roughly C$430 million.
After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. A chance call from his former Hollywood‑hill roommate, Michael Abbott, lured him back: “Joe showed me a demo that completely blew my mind and pulled me out of retirement.” Wendschuh then recruited Reid Schneider—formerly a vice‑president at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet—as a strategic advisor. Schneider brought in Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer. With this core team in place, the next hurdle was financing. Pitching began in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn.
Despite the challenging climate, the team’s vision attracted interest. After multiple rounds of outreach, they signed with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles and continued pitching throughout 2024. Their persistence paid off when they secured a seed round from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both taking equity stakes in Wolf Haus.
The partnership with CAA proved valuable; the agency’s experience representing high‑profile games like 007: First Light added credibility. Additionally, having veteran industry figures such as Schneider and Chartrand on board helped assuage investor concerns about the studio’s small size.
Today, Wolf Haus operates with just thirteen full‑time employees. 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 over the final product.” To make an ambitious open‑world title feasible with limited manpower, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single developer," Dietsch noted.
"We spent the first year simultaneously designing gameplay and building the internal tools that would let us expand without the project collapsing under its own weight." Funding from Kraftor and Lifelike allowed the studio to self‑finance development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing. Because the investors hold equity, they are motivated to see Wolf Haus increase in enterprise value, which aligns with the studio’s philosophy of building reusable tools. "When we encounter a problem we can’t solve, we build a tool to fix it," Wendschuh explained. "It may slow us down short‑term, but it enables a tiny team to achieve what would normally require dozens of people." In an era where many developers tout generative‑AI pipelines, Wolf Haus deliberately avoids AI for creative work.
"We believe a game needs a human touch," Dietsch said. "Using AI to generate core content would defeat the purpose of why we love making games. We only use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting." Krafton, despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company, also insisted that Wolf Haus not employ generative AI in the creative pipeline.
This mirrors a broader industry trend where studios backed by AI‑focused investors still prefer to keep artistic creation human‑driven, especially for voice work and narrative design. Join Us features a six‑kilometre‑square hand‑crafted map and roughly 15,000 voice lines performed by real actors—an effort the team considers essential to preserving authenticity. Dietsch reflects on the contrast between filmmaking and game development.
In film, ideas can sit on paper for years before production begins, requiring the approval of high‑profile talent and studios. In games, an idea can be prototyped in a matter of hours, allowing immediate iteration. "You can have a concept this morning, drop it into the engine, and see it in action by lunch," he said. This immediacy, he believes, lowers the barrier to entry compared to Hollywood, where gatekeepers and star power dominate.
Nevertheless, both mediums share a common creative impulse: storytelling and immersion. Dietsch recalls his childhood ambition to make either movies or games, noting that a simple coin toss and a Christmas camera set him on a path that blended programming on a TI‑83 calculator with a love for narrative.
"Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience," he concluded. Join Us stands as a testament to what a focused, technically adept, and creatively driven micro‑studio can achieve without leaning on generative AI.
By leveraging Hollywood connections, strategic funding, and a commitment to handcrafted content, Wolf Haus is poised to deliver a cult‑simulating adventure that feels both wildly original and meticulously polished.