You may remember seeing the Join Us trailer during the Xbox Showcase in June. The clip introduced a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers ride on pigs, fire machine guns, and ultimately confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One detail that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous "snake gun," a weapon that originated from a simple suggestion by a developer’s son. As Joe Dietsch, CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, recounts, the kid asked, “Can there be a snake gun?” Thanks to a rapid‑prototyping tool the studio had built, Dietsch was able to assemble a functional snake‑shooting weapon in roughly half an hour.
The result was a jaw‑dropping moment for the youngster, and the weapon remains in the game today. That anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the team’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a small group 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 philosophy: “We wanted to be disruptors.
We told everyone we could build this with twelve people, and they laughed.” The Wolf Haus founders are no strangers to punching above their weight. Their backgrounds lie in indie filmmaking, where operating on shoestring budgets is the norm.
“We come from indie film,” Abbott says. “We’re used to doing big things with limited resources.” After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the company. The founding trio has deep ties to Hollywood.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson—and the two later co‑wrote and co‑directed the movies 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 he turned his attention to Star Citizen.
Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us began as a personal experiment in Unreal Engine.
"I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering with it after watching countless YouTube tutorials," Dietsch explains. Though he had never built a game before, he managed to create a few small prototypes before deciding to tackle something more ambitious: a doomsday cult simulator that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo and showed it to Abbott, who then introduced the project to Dooma, a production partner. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director, entered the gaming world after a career in film production and screenwriting. 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 (about $330 million USD). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote restaurant on a tiny Canadian island, planning a quiet retirement. That plan was interrupted when an old Hollywood‑hill roommate, Michael Abbott, called him about a video‑game project.
The demo impressed Wendschuh so much that he emerged from retirement to join the effort. Through Abbott’s network, the studio recruited Reid Schneider—former VP at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, the creators of Journey to the Savage Planet—as a strategic advisor.
Schneider also brought in Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer. With this core in place, the next hurdle was financing, which proved difficult amid a broader industry downturn. After initial outreach and a partnership with CAA (Creative Artists Agency), the team resumed pitching in 2024 and eventually closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. The backing from CAA, which also represents titles like 007: First Light, and the involvement of seasoned veterans such as Schneider and Chartrand, were instrumental in gaining investor confidence.
"Derek Douglas, our agent at CAA, had represented me for twelve years in games and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris," Wendschuh notes. Despite the high ambitions, Join Us is being built by only thirteen full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team culture is intentional: everyone has a voice, everyone touches the creative process, and the final product feels like a collective labor of love. To make such a large‑scale experience feasible, the studio 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 says. The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and constructing the internal tools that would keep the project from collapsing under its own weight. The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway needed to perfect those tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s investment essentially self‑funded the game," Wendschuh explains.
While the studio is now seeking a modest amount of project finance for marketing, the core development has been covered entirely by the equity partners. This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the team to keep building reusable tools even if it slows short‑term progress.
When asked about generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not employ it in the creative pipeline. "We believe a human touch is essential for games," Dietsch states. The only AI they use is for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton—publicly branding itself as an "AI‑first" company—specifically required that Wolf Haus refrain from using generative AI in game creation, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio.
The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map is entirely hand‑built, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices.
Dietsch believes this human‑centric approach is vital, even for an indie‑scale project. Comparing game development to filmmaking, Dietsch highlights the immediacy of the former.
In film, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and a lengthy production schedule. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours, allowing creators to see their vision instantly in the engine.
Wendschuh adds that film production is heavily front‑loaded, often dependent on securing a few high‑profile names to greenlight a project, whereas the game industry has far fewer gatekeepers. "You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to make a successful game," he says.
Both mediums, however, share a common creative impulse: storytelling and experience design. Dietsch reflects on his childhood fascination with both movies and games, noting that whether you’re crafting a film or a video game, the goal is to engage an audience and tell a compelling story. This belief underpins Join Us, a game that blends cinematic flair with interactive freedom, all while being built by a lean, Hollywood‑savvy team that eschews generative AI in favour of pure human creativity.