The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, giving viewers a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator. In the clip, robed followers zip around on pigs, wielding machine guns, before the screen erupts into a vision of massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the final cut was the infamous snake‑gun, a weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a simple suggestion by a team member’s child.
“His 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. I built it on the spot, and the kid went nuts.
It’s still in the game today,” Dietsch recalls. That anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult empire.
It also illustrates the studio’s tech‑first mindset, which has enabled a relatively small crew to produce a high‑fidelity title 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.
We told everyone we could build this with twelve people, and they laughed. They thought we were crazy.” The team’s confidence stems from a history of doing big things on shoestring budgets. Abbott grew up in indie film, learning to stretch resources far beyond what the budget would suggest.
“We come from the indie‑film world, where you learn to punch above your weight,” he says. After 80 pitches, Wolf Haus finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the studio.
Wolf Haus’s founders are steeped in Hollywood pedigree. 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 films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. The seed of Join Us sprouted when Dietsch began tinkering with Unreal Engine.
“Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games. It felt like there was a huge barrier to actually creating something, so I downloaded it and started learning from YouTube tutorials,” he explains. Though he had no formal training, Dietsch managed to produce a few small prototypes before deciding to tackle something larger. The concept that kept resurfacing was a doomsday cult simulator—a mash‑up of survival mechanics, grindhouse cinema aesthetics, and the narrative drive of a cult thriller.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and the two took it to Dooma, a partner studio. 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 such as 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 roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire and walk his dog on the beach. Yet a call from his old Hollywood‑hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into development. “Joe sent me a demo, and it blew my mind.
I came out of retirement to help,” Wendschuh says. Through Abbott’s network, Wolf Haus recruited Reid Schneider, a former 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 on Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. By the summer of 2023 the core team was in place, but securing financing proved difficult amid a broader industry downturn. After initial outreach and a partnership with CAA (Creative Artists Agency), the studio returned to pitching in 2024 and eventually closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
The CAA connection—alongside veteran advisors like Schneider and Chartrand—proved pivotal. “Derek Douglas, our agent at CAA, had represented me for twelve years in games and previously ran the video‑game department at William Morris,” Wendschuh notes. Today Wolf Haus operates with just 13 full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the small size is intentional: “We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative, and to feel ownership of the final product.” To make a sprawling open‑world title feasible for such a lean crew, the studio invested heavily in internal tooling from day one. “If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” Dietsch explains.
“We spent the first year building the tools that let us iterate quickly and keep the project from collapsing under its own weight.” This tool‑centric philosophy also aligns with the studio’s equity‑funded model. Krafton and Lifelike’s capital has been used primarily to finance development, with the studio now seeking modest project financing for marketing. “Our investors want the studio to increase enterprise value, so they support our heavy investment in tools,” says Wendschuh. “It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables us to deliver a AAA‑scale experience with a tiny team.” When asked about the role of generative AI, both Dietsch and Wendschuh are unequivocal: they do not use it for creative work.
"We believe a human touch is essential. The only AI we use is for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting," Wendschuh says.
Krafton, despite branding itself as an “AI‑first” company, also insisted that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, fearing it could undermine the studio’s artistic integrity and potentially displace voice actors and artists. As a result, every square kilometer of Join Us’s map is handcrafted, and the game’s 15,000 voice lines were recorded by real actors.
Dietsch reflects on the differences between film and game development. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and studio green‑lights.
In games, an idea can be prototyped the same day it’s conceived. "You can have a concept in the morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly.
That immediacy is exhilarating," he says. Wendschuh adds that film production is heavily front‑loaded: securing a few high‑profile directors or actors is often the gatekeeper to a green‑light. While anyone can technically shoot a movie with a backyard camera, the odds of that indie film achieving commercial success without star power or distribution are slim. By contrast, the video‑game market has far fewer gatekeepers.
"You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to make a hit game," Wendschuh notes. "The barriers to entry are lower, and the potential payoff is higher." Both men agree that the core creative drive is the same across mediums: to tell a story, craft an experience, and engage an audience.
"When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games—it came down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas," Dietsch laughs. "I learned to program on a TI‑83, so I’ve always been straddling both worlds. Whether it’s a film or a game, the goal is to create an experience that resonates with people." Join Us thus stands as a testament to what a small, tightly knit team can achieve when they blend Hollywood storytelling sensibilities, tech‑savvy tool development, and a refusal to rely on generative AI shortcuts.
The game promises a bizarre, satirical cult adventure, built from the ground up by a crew that believes in the power of human creativity over automated solutions.