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 pig‑mounted vehicles, spraying enemies with machine guns before the screen fades to a monstrous, Cthulhu‑like mass of tentacles. What didn’t make it into the teaser was the infamous snake gun, a weapon that Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—credits to a spontaneous idea from one of his team member’s children.
“His son asked, ‘What would a snake gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a new weapon in about half an hour, so I built a gun that fires snakes on the spot. He was blown away, and the weapon stayed in the final build,” Dietsch recalls.
That anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can amass followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to form a 1970s‑style cult and wreak havoc across a sprawling map. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a tiny 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. Everyone told us you’d need a hundred people to pull this off; we proved them wrong with just twelve.” The team’s confidence stems from a background in low‑budget, high‑impact filmmaking.
“We come from indie cinema, where you learn to punch far above your weight,” Abbott says. After 80 pitch meetings, Wolf Haus finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the studio. The founders’ Hollywood roots run deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University in California alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson and fellow Wolf Haus co‑founder. 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, a production company founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to the Star Citizen universe.
Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine. “I discovered Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt the barrier to creating one was huge,” he explains.
He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few modest prototypes, and eventually gravitated toward a doomsday cult simulator—a concept that fused his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept, hit what he expected would be a technical wall, and showed the demo to Abbott, who then introduced it to Dooma. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before transitioning to games 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, most notably 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, planning a quiet retirement. Yet a call from his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back: “Joe showed me a game prototype that completely blew my mind and convinced me to come out of retirement.” Wendschuh then recruited Reid Schneider, former Warner Bros Games VP and current head of Raccoon Logic (the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet), 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—a daunting task in a market downturn that began in mid‑2023. Initial pitches generated interest but no commitments.
After signing with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and re‑pitching in 2024, Wolf Haus finally closed a seed round with Krafton and Lifelike Capital. Wendschuh credits CAA’s clout and the presence of seasoned industry veterans for the eventual success. “Derek Douglas, our CAA agent, was my agent during my twelve years in games and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris,” he notes.
What truly sets Join Us apart is the scale of its creation: just 13 full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the team deliberately kept the group small to preserve a collaborative atmosphere where every voice matters and everyone can touch the creative core. To make a large‑scale open world feasible with such a lean crew, Wolf Haus invested heavily in internal tooling from day one.
“Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single developer,” Dietsch explains. “We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive map without the project collapsing under its own weight.” The first year of development was therefore split between ideating gameplay and constructing the tools that would later enable that gameplay.
The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools. Krafton and Lifelike’s investment was used to self‑finance the entire development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing. “Our investors benefit from the studio’s enterprise value, so they encourage us to build extensive tools,” Wendschuh says. “When we encounter a problem we can’t solve, we simply create a tool to address it.
It may slow us down in the short term, but it empowers a tiny team to deliver a game of this magnitude.” Despite the industry’s growing reliance on generative AI, Wolf Haus deliberately steered clear of it for creative work. “We don’t use generative AI in development because we value the human touch,” Dietsch asserts. “We have a few subscriptions for mundane tasks like calendar management, but nothing that influences design or art.” Interestingly, Krafton—positioned as an “AI‑first” company—insisted that Wolf Haus avoid AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring Neon Giant’s public stance against using AI for game content. The studio’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s massive six‑kilometre‑square map 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‑driven,” Dietsch says. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between film and games. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and studio green‑lights. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning and instantly visualised in the engine.
“That immediacy is exhilarating,” he notes. Wendschuh adds that while film production is front‑loaded with intense, high‑stakes set work and reliance on a few marquee names, games have far fewer gatekeepers. “You don’t need an A‑list star or director to make a successful game; the barriers to entry are lower, which democratises creation.” Both founders agree that whether you’re making movies or games, the core mission is the same: to craft an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience. “When I was six, I wanted to create either movies or games—it boiled down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas,” Dietsch smiles.
“I learned programming on a TI‑83, so I’ve always been drawn to both mediums. Ultimately, it’s about delivering an experience that resonates, regardless of the format."