The trailer for Join Us first caught many eyes when it was showcased during Xbox’s June event, presenting a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator where robed followers ride pigs, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and culminate in a terrifying vision of Cthulhu‑like tentacles. Yet the most memorable moment that didn’t make the public cut was the appearance of a snake‑shooting weapon, a quirky addition that Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—attributes to a spontaneous idea from a team member’s child. "His son asked, ‘What would a snake gun look like?’" Dietsch recalls. "Because we had a modular gun‑creation tool, I was able to prototype a snake‑projectile weapon in roughly thirty minutes.
The kid went wild, and we kept the weapon in the final build." That anecdote perfectly illustrates the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us. The game is an open‑world sandbox survival experience set in a 1970s‑style cult, where players can recruit AI followers or invite friends to join the madness in co‑op mode. More importantly, it showcases the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a small, tightly‑knit team to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger workforce. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We wanted to be the disruptors who prove you don’t need a hundred‑person studio to deliver a AAA‑level experience." "Everyone told us it was impossible," Abbott says.
"But we come from indie‑film backgrounds where we constantly had to punch far above our budgetary weight. After 80 pitches, we finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took a stake in Wolf Haus." The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, the son of Mel Gibson, who later co‑founded Wolf Haus and 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, a production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before his shift to the Star Citizen universe. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx, further cementing the team’s entertainment credentials. Join Us was born from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
"I discovered that Unreal Engine was free to download and thought, ‘Why not give it a try?’" he explains. "I’d been a gamer my whole life, but creating something felt out of reach until I started watching YouTube tutorials and tinkering on my own." Despite having no formal game‑development background, Dietsch managed to ship a few small prototypes before committing to a larger vision.
He kept returning to the concept of a doomsday cult simulator because it merged his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics, essentially fusing his two creative passions into a single intellectual property. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, hit a technical wall, and then showed it to Abbott, who immediately recognized its potential and presented it to Dooma.
Dooma Wendschuh, the studio’s CFO and narrative director, entered the picture after a varied career that spanned film production, screenwriting, and video‑game narrative work. In the early 2000s he founded Sekretagent Productions, providing story services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, he launched several tech ventures, most notably 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, intending to retire and enjoy a quiet life.
That retirement was short‑lived. "One day I got a call from my old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, who told me a friend had made a video game. I watched Joe’s demo and was blown away, so I came out of retirement," Wendschuh recounts. He introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros.
Games VP now heading Raccoon Logic, and Schneider recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With this core leadership in place, the studio turned its focus to funding.
Pitching began in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn. "People liked what we showed, but the market was tough," Dietsch says. The team enlisted the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) to help navigate the pitch process, eventually closing a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024.
Wendschuh notes that CAA’s representation—also handling titles like 007: First Light—combined with the credibility of veterans like Schneider and Chartrand, proved instrumental in sealing the deal. Even with the backing, Wolf Haus has deliberately kept its headcount minuscule—13 full‑time staff members at the time of writing.
"We wanted a small‑team culture where every voice matters and everyone can touch the creative core," Dietsch explains. To make such an ambitious open‑world game feasible with a lean crew, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from day one. "If a system exists, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch says.
"We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive map without the project collapsing under its own weight." The funding model gave the studio the breathing room to perfect these tools. Krafton and Lifelike’s equity investment was used to self‑fund development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing. "Our investors are motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they support our tool‑building ethos," Wendschuh adds.
"Whenever we encounter a problem we don’t know how to solve, we build a tool for it. It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a tiny team to achieve something that would otherwise require dozens of engineers." In an era where many studios tout generative‑AI pipelines, Wolf Haus has taken a clear stance against using AI for creative work. "We don’t employ generative AI in any artistic capacity," Dietsch affirms. "Our process relies on human craftsmanship; handing the creative decisions to an algorithm would defeat the purpose of why we love making games." Wendschuh concedes that the team uses AI for mundane administrative tasks—calendar management and email drafting—but insists that all narrative, visual, and audio content is handcrafted.
This philosophy aligns with Krafton’s own position; despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company, Krafton explicitly required that Wolf Haus not integrate generative AI into the game's core development. "They wanted to ensure their investment wasn’t funding a studio that relied on AI‑generated assets," Wendschuh notes, echoing similar statements from Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The commitment to hand‑crafted content is evident in the game’s scale: the six‑kilometre‑square map was built entirely by hand, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices.
Dietsch emphasizes that this level of detail matters even for an indie‑sized title. Reflecting on the differences between film and game production, Dietsch highlights the immediacy of the latter. "In film, you write a script, wait years for greenlight, then shoot—there’s a long, permission‑driven pipeline. In games, you can have an idea at breakfast and see it in the engine by lunch.
That instant feedback loop is exhilarating." Wendschuh adds that film production is heavily front‑loaded, requiring high‑profile talent to secure financing, whereas games have fewer gatekeepers. "Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without a star or distributor, the odds of success are slim.
In games, the barrier to entry is lower; you don’t need an A‑list actor or director to make a hit." Both founders agree that the core creative drive—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," Dietsch smiles. "I learned to program on a TI‑83, so the love for both has always been there. Whether you’re crafting a film or a game, you’re ultimately giving people an experience, a narrative, and an emotional connection.
That essence never changes."