The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation. In the clip, robed followers charge on pig‑back while firing machine guns, culminating in a shot of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the edit, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—was the infamous snake gun.
"One of the developer’s kids suggested, ‘What if there’s a snake gun?’" Dietsch recalls. "Because we had a modular weapon system, I could prototype a snake‑shooting firearm in about thirty minutes.
The kid went wild, and the weapon stayed in the final build." That anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top tone of Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game where players can recruit AI followers or friends into a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s tech‑first philosophy, which has enabled a high‑fidelity experience to be assembled by a remarkably small crew. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up the ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors.
We told everyone we could build a AAA‑level title with just twelve people, and they laughed." The team’s confidence stems from a background in low‑budget, high‑impact productions. "We come from indie filmmaking and are used to punching far above our weight," Abbott explains.
After eighty pitch meetings, Wolf Haus finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the studio. The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who now co‑foundes 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 banner started by Chris Roberts before his shift to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
Join Us began as a hobby project in Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt the barrier to creating one was huge," Dietsch says.
He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, eventually producing a handful of small prototypes before committing to a larger vision. The core idea—a doomsday cult simulator that fuses survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—kept resurfacing, merging his two passions into a single intellectual property. The proof‑of‑concept demo was rough but promising.
Dietsch presented it to Abbott, who then took it to Dooma, the studio’s early‑stage partner. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had a film background before transitioning to games in the early 2000s, providing writing services for 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 C$430 million.
After selling Ebbu, 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.
"I saw the demo Joe made and it blew my mind, so I came out of retirement," Wendschuh recounts. He introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, who became a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With a core team forming, the next hurdle was financing—particularly difficult during the industry downturn of 2023‑24.
The studio pitched repeatedly, eventually signing with CAA in Los Angeles and re‑launching the fundraising effort in 2024. Their persistence paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed a seed round, providing the capital needed to continue development.
Abbott credits the CAA connection and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for smoothing the path. "My agent Derek Douglas, who also represented me during my twelve‑year game‑making career, was instrumental," says Wendschuh. Despite the high ambitions, Join Us is being built by just thirteen full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team model 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 a scope feasible, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling from day one. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single developer," Dietsch explains. The studio devoted a large portion of the first year to building a flexible toolkit that could support an expansive open‑world map without collapsing under its own weight.
This tool‑centric approach also serves future projects, creating a reusable foundation for later games. The equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed the studio to self‑finance 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 encourage us to build robust tools," Wendschuh notes. "When we encounter a problem we don’t know how to solve, we simply create a tool to address it.
It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a tiny team to deliver a game of this magnitude." When asked about generative AI, Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not rely on it for any creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate assets would defeat the purpose of why we love making games," he says. Wendschuh adds that the only AI they employ is for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting.
Krafton, despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑backed studio. The team’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio.
The six‑kilometre‑square map was built entirely by hand, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices. "Even as a small indie, we felt it was crucial to preserve that human element," Dietsch asserts. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between filmmaking and game development.
In film, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring greenlights, high‑profile talent, and massive distribution deals. By contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours and tested directly in the engine.
"You can have an idea in the morning, put it into the engine, and see it instantly. That immediacy is exhilarating," he says. Wendschuh agrees, noting that film production is front‑loaded with intense, high‑stakes set work, whereas games have fewer gatekeepers. "Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without big names or distribution, success is unlikely.
In games, the barriers are lower; you don’t need an A‑list actor or director to reach an audience." Both founders trace their creative spark back to childhood. "When I was six, I wanted to make either games or movies—it came down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera," Dietsch recalls. He taught himself programming on a TI‑83 calculator, a skill that later merged with his love of storytelling.
He concludes that regardless of medium, the goal remains the same: "You’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging the audience. The tools change, but the core purpose does not."