The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, giving viewers a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulation. In the clip, robed followers charge on pig‑back while wielding machine guns, culminating in a nightmarish vision of Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
What didn’t make the edit was the infamous snake‑gun, a quirky weapon that, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—was born from a child’s off‑hand suggestion. "One of the team members’ kids asked, ‘What would a snake‑gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a new firearm in about thirty minutes, so I built one that actually fires snakes.
The kid went nuts, and the weapon stuck around in the final build," Dietsch recalls. This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or bring friends into the fold—to build a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a high‑fidelity, large‑scale title to emerge from a surprisingly small crew.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, sums up their ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build a AAA‑level experience with just a dozen people.
Most people laughed and said it was impossible." Their confidence wasn’t baseless. The founders come from indie‑film backgrounds where they learned to stretch modest budgets into ambitious productions. "We’re used to punching far above our weight," Abbott says. After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus.
The founding team’s Hollywood roots run deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson—and the two later 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 film production house founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us began as a personal experiment in Unreal Engine. "I discovered that Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt blocked by the high entry barrier to actually create something," Dietsch explains.
He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few small prototypes, and eventually settled on a doomsday cult simulator that fused survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. The concept served as a bridge between his filmic sensibilities and his gaming passion. Creating a proof‑of‑concept was a test of both vision and technical stamina. "I pushed the demo as far as I could, expecting to hit a wall at some point," Dietsch says.
When he showed the early build to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and introduced it to Dooma, a key early partner. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director, entered the picture after a varied career spanning film production, screenwriting, and video‑game narrative work.
He founded Sekretagent Productions, which supplied writing for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, he built several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million (about $330 million USD).
Retirement was briefly on Wendschuh’s agenda after he bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, but a call from his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the fray. "I was watching a video of the game Joe had made, and it completely blew my mind. It convinced me to come out of retirement," he recounts.
Wendschuh then enlisted Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games VP now heading Raccoon Logic, as a strategic advisor, and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. Funding proved to be the next hurdle.
The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn. While early reactions were positive—"this looks cool"—securing capital required persistence. After initial outreach, Wolf Haus signed with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) in Los Angeles, refined their pitch, and returned to investors in 2024.
Their efforts paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed a seed round, providing the cash needed to continue development. Abbott credits the CAA connection and the involvement of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for smoothing the fundraising path. "Our agent Derek Douglas had represented me for over a decade and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris," Wendschuh notes. Despite the high ambitions, the studio has remained lean, employing just 13 full‑time staff members.
"We entered the project knowing exactly what we wanted to achieve, but we also wanted a small‑team culture where everyone’s voice matters and everyone can touch the creative core," Dietsch says. To make such a scope feasible, the team invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person. We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across an open world without the project collapsing under its own weight," he explains.
The first year of development was therefore split between ideating gameplay and constructing the underlying tools that would later support the game and any future projects. The equity financing model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools.
"Krafton and Lifelike’s investment essentially self‑funded the game. We’re now only taking on a small amount of project finance for marketing, but the core development was covered by their equity stakes," Wendschuh says. This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the building of reusable tools even if it slows short‑term progress.
When asked about generative AI, a hot topic in game development, Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not rely on it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate core content would defeat the reason we get up each morning," he states. Wendschuh adds that while the team may use AI for administrative tasks like calendar management, it never touches the artistic side of production.
Interestingly, Krafton—positioned as an "AI‑first" company—explicitly discouraged the use of generative AI in Wolf Haus’s pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The studio’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map was built by hand, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, a point the team emphasizes as a badge of pride for an indie‑scale operation.
Dietsch reflects on the differences between film and games, noting the immediacy of the latter. "In film, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring countless approvals.
In games, you can prototype a concept in a morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly. That instant feedback loop is exhilarating," he says.
Wendschuh observes that filmmaking is heavily front‑loaded, with intense pre‑production and the need to secure high‑profile talent to greenlight a project. By contrast, games have fewer gatekeepers; a small team can launch a successful title without A‑list actors or directors. "The barrier to entry is lower, and the chance of success is higher if you have a solid product," he explains.
Both men agree that the core creative impulse—telling stories and delivering experiences—remains the same across mediums. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games. It came down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas.
I learned programming on a TI‑83, so I’ve always been straddling both worlds," Dietsch says. "Whether it’s a film or a game, you’re crafting an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. The medium changes, but the purpose stays constant."