The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, giving viewers a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator. In the clip, robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with an image of massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
What didn’t make it into the teaser 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, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool, so within half an hour I built it. The kid was thrilled, and the gun stayed in the final build," Dietsch recalls. That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit of Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game where players can recruit followers—or teammates in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult.
It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a tiny crew to craft a high‑fidelity experience that would normally demand a far larger staff. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors. We told ourselves we could do everything with a twelve‑person team, and everyone else thought we were crazy." The founders’ background in indie filmmaking gave them confidence in punching above their weight.
"We come from indie film, where you have to make something spectacular on a shoestring budget," Abbott explains. After 80 pitches, Wolf Haus finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the studio.
Wolf Haus’s leadership is steeped in Hollywood history. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who now co‑foundes the studio. Together they 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 his move to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games, but the barrier to creating something felt huge.
I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," he says. Though he lacked formal game‑development experience, Dietsch soon created a proof‑of‑concept that blended doomsday‑cult themes with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—an idea he kept returning to because it merged his favorite film and game tropes.
The demo impressed Abbott, who presented it to Dooma, a production partner. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s, contributing writing to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. He later founded several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million.
After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back: "I watched the demo Joe sent me, and it blew my mind. It convinced me to come out of retirement." Wendschuh then recruited Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games vice‑president now heading Raccoon Logic, as a strategic advisor, and brought in Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer.
With the core team in place, the next hurdle was financing. The studio began pitching in summer 2023, a period marked by an industry downturn.
"People liked what we were building, but the market was tough," Dietsch notes. After initial outreach, they signed with CAA in Los Angeles, re‑pitched in 2024, and eventually closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
Wendschuh believes the CAA connection—alongside seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand—was crucial. "My agent Derek Douglas, who’s also our CAA contact, has known me since my early game‑dev days and helped open doors," he says. What truly sets Join Us apart is its development model: only 13 full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the small size was 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 custom tooling early on. "Every system must be scalable and debuggable by a single person.
We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive map without the project collapsing," he explains. The first year of development was therefore a dual effort: iterating on game design while simultaneously constructing the tools that would sustain future growth. The equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed Wolf Haus to self‑finance the entire 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 says. "Whenever we hit a problem we don’t know how to solve, we simply build a tool.
It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a tiny team to deliver a game of this scope." Despite the buzz around generative AI in game creation, Wolf Haus deliberately avoids it for creative tasks. "We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate core content would defeat why we love making games," Dietsch asserts.
Wendschuh adds that the studio’s AI subscriptions are limited to administrative functions like calendar management and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton, which has branded itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required Wolf Haus not to employ generative AI for artistic work. This mirrors a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant, which publicly distanced itself from AI‑driven development. The commitment to hand‑crafted content extends to the game’s world and audio.
The six‑kilometre‑square map was manually designed, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors—a point the team stresses as a badge of pride for an indie studio. Dietsch reflects on the contrast between film and games: "In film, an idea can take years to materialise, needing approvals, big‑name talent, and studio backing. In games, you can prototype an idea in a morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly. That immediacy is exhilarating." Wendschuh agrees, noting that film production is front‑loaded with intense, high‑stakes coordination, whereas games have fewer gatekeepers.
"Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without star power or distribution it’s hard to break through. With games, the barrier is lower—you don’t need an A‑list actor or director to succeed." Both founders trace their passion back to childhood. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games; it came down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera," Dietsch says. He taught himself programming on a TI‑83 calculator, blending his love of storytelling with interactive design.
Ultimately, he believes the core creative impulse—crafting experiences, telling stories, and engaging audiences—remains the same across both mediums.