The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulation. In the clip, robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with an image of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One detail that 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 child’s imagination.
"My team member’s son asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for weapons, so within half an hour I built a gun that fires snakes. The kid went nuts, and we kept it in the game," Dietsch recalls. That anecdote encapsulates the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or other players in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s tech‑first philosophy, which has allowed a relatively tiny crew to produce a high‑fidelity, large‑scale title.
"We wanted to be disruptors," says Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer. "We told ourselves we could do everything with twelve people. Everyone else said it was impossible." The team’s confidence stems from a history of punching far above their weight. Abbott grew up in indie film, the son of renowned makeup artist Larry Abbott, and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production house founded by Chris Roberts before his Star Citizen days.
He later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, and the two co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie features Happy Hunting and Manifest West. Their collective experience in low‑budget, high‑impact storytelling gave them the mindset needed to tackle an ambitious game on a shoestring budget.
Wolf Haus’s funding journey was a marathon of pitches—around eighty attempts—before securing equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital. Both investors took a stake in the studio, providing the capital needed to bring Join Us to life without resorting to external financing or generative‑AI shortcuts. The seed of Join Us sprouted when Dietsch began tinkering with Unreal Engine, drawn by its free download model.
"I’d loved games for years, but the barrier to actually create something felt huge. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," he explains.
The simple act of downloading Unreal sparked a larger vision: a doomsday cult simulator that fused survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and the concept quickly gained momentum. Key to the studio’s growth was Dooma Wendschuh, the chief financial officer and narrative director. Wendschuh began his career as a producer and screenwriter in Hollywood before moving into 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.
Later he launched several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million (about $330 million USD). After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, a call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the industry. Impressed by Dietsch’s demo, Wendschuh joined the effort, bringing in strategic advisor Reid Schneider—formerly a VP at Warner Bros.
Games—and CTO Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer. Securing financing proved challenging amid a market downturn in 2023‑24.
The team partnered with CAA in Los Angeles, leveraged the agency’s clout, and eventually closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. "Having CAA, which also represents titles like 007: First Light, opened doors that would have otherwise stayed closed," Wendschuh notes, adding that long‑time industry contacts such as Derek Douglas, his former agent and former head of the video‑game department at William Morris, were instrumental. Despite the high ambitions, Wolf Haus kept its roster deliberately small—thirteen full‑time staff members. The studio’s mantra was to maintain a tight‑knit environment where every voice mattered and every team member could influence the creative direction.
To make a game of Join Us’s scope feasible with such a lean crew, they invested heavily in custom tooling from day one. "Every system must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," says Dietsch. "We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive open world without the project collapsing under its own weight." The equity funding model gave the studio the runway to perfect these tools. Krafton and Lifelike’s investment was used directly to finance development, allowing the team to self‑fund the game while only tapping external project finance for marketing later on.
This structure aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the continual building of in‑house solutions. When asked about generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not rely on it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate assets would defeat why we get up each morning," Dietsch asserts.
Wendschuh adds that while they may use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management, none of it touches the artistic side of development. Krafton, despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid AI‑generated content, mirroring a broader industry caution about AI displacing voice actors and artists.
Every element of Join Us’s six‑kilometre‑square map is handcrafted, and the game’s 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors—a point the team stresses as a badge of pride. Dietsch contrasts the immediacy of game development with the lengthy pipeline of film. "In movies, 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 speed is exhilarating." Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, requiring a handful of high‑profile directors or actors to secure a green light.
By contrast, the video‑game landscape has fewer gatekeepers; a small indie can achieve success without celebrity endorsement. This democratization is a core reason why Wolf Haus believes a twelve‑person team can deliver a blockbuster‑level experience. Both Dietsch and Wendschuh agree that, regardless of medium, the ultimate goal is the same: to craft an experience that tells a story, engages the audience, and leaves a lasting impression. Their shared background in Hollywood, combined with a willingness to build their own technology and reject shortcuts like generative AI, has positioned Wolf Haus to launch Join Us as a bold, creator‑driven cult simulator that challenges conventional expectations of what a small studio can achieve.