The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator. In the teaser, robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with an image of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
One element that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous snake gun, a feature that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, proudly recounts. According to Dietsch, the idea came from a junior member of the team’s family. “My teammate’s son asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us scale a weapon in minutes, so within half an hour I built a gun that fires snakes. The kid was blown away, and the weapon survived into the final build.” This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit followers—or teammates—to join a retro‑70s‑style cult.
The game’s wild mechanics are only part of the story. Wolf Haus’s development philosophy leans heavily on technology, allowing a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff. Michael Abbott, the studio’s chief operating officer, explains the team’s disruptive mindset: “We told ourselves we didn’t need a hundred developers; twelve could do the job.
Everyone else thought we were crazy.” Their confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where they learned to stretch limited budgets far beyond conventional expectations. After 80 pitch meetings, the studio finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving the project a solid financial foundation. The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who now co‑heads Wolf Haus. 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 transition to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies 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 felt the barrier to creation was huge,” he says. He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, eventually building a few small prototypes.
The concept that stuck with him was a doomsday cult simulator that blended survival gameplay with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—a hybrid of his two passions. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, expecting to hit a technical wall at some point.
When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter immediately took it to Dooma, a partner who helped shape the project’s direction. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director, entered the video‑game arena after a career as a film producer and screenwriter.
In the early 2000s he founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative services for titles like 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 the sale, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a call from his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back: “Joe showed me a video‑game prototype that blew my mind and 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. Schneider brought on Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer.
With this core in place, the studio turned its attention to funding. Pitching began in summer 2023, a period marked by an industry downturn. Despite the bleak climate, the team’s connections—particularly through CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and veteran agents like Derek Douglas—helped them land seed investment from Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024. The studio’s lean structure—13 full‑time staff members—was intentional.
Dietsch stresses that a small team fosters a sense of ownership: “Everyone has a voice, everyone touches the creative, and the game feels like a product of a tightly knit group.” To make an ambitious open‑world title feasible with limited personnel, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling early on. “If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” Dietsch explains.
The first year of development was therefore split between ideating gameplay and building the internal tools that would keep the project from collapsing under its own weight as the world expanded. Funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed the studio to self‑finance the development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing.
Because the investors hold equity, they are motivated to see the studio increase its enterprise value, which aligns with Wolf Haus’s ethos of building reusable tools. “Whenever we encounter a problem we can’t solve, we build a tool to address it,” says Dietsch. “It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a small team to deliver a game of this scale.” When asked about generative AI, the team draws a clear line.
Dietsch states unequivocally, “We don’t use generative AI for any creative work. The human touch is essential to us; handing the creative process over to an algorithm would defeat the purpose of why we get up each morning.” Wendschuh adds that the studio only employs AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, never for art, design, or narrative.
Interestingly, Krafton—an “AI‑first” company—insisted that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline as a condition of their investment, echoing similar statements from Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The studio’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s massive six‑kilometre‑square map, which was built entirely by hand, and its 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by human actors. “Even as a tiny indie, we felt it was crucial to keep the experience fully human,” Dietsch emphasizes.
Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between film and game development. In film, ideas can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and studio green‑lights. In games, an idea can be prototyped within hours: “You can have a concept in the morning, drop it into the engine, see it instantly, and start iterating.” Wendschuh notes that movies are front‑loaded with high‑stakes pre‑production, whereas games have fewer gatekeepers; you don’t need an A‑list star or director to get a project off the ground.
This democratization, he argues, makes the odds of a successful game higher than those of an independent film. Both founders trace their creative spark back to childhood. Dietsch recalls wanting to make either movies or games at six, a decision that hinged on a Christmas gift—a camera.
He taught himself programming on a TI‑83 calculator, a skill that later translated into game development. “Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. The medium changes, but the core intent stays the same.” In summary, Wolf Haus’s journey illustrates how a small, tech‑savvy team with deep Hollywood connections can defy industry expectations. By prioritising bespoke tools, rejecting generative AI for creative work, and leveraging equity partners who share their vision, they have crafted a sprawling, hand‑crafted cult simulator with just a dozen developers.
Join Us stands as a testament to the power of ingenuity, interdisciplinary experience, and the belief that a focused, passionate crew can build something far larger than its size would suggest.