You may remember seeing the Join Us trailer at the Xbox Showcase in June, where a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator was on full display. The clip showed robed disciples riding on pigs, brandishing machine guns, and ending with a nightmarish vision of Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the cut was the infamous snake gun, a 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 literally fires snakes. The kid went nuts, and the weapon stayed in the final build," Dietsch recalls. This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to their retro‑70s cult. It also illustrates why Wolf Haus leans heavily on custom tooling: the studio has managed to produce a high‑fidelity, content‑rich experience with a remarkably small crew.
Michael Abbott, the studio’s chief operating officer, sums up their philosophy: "We set out to be disruptors. Everyone told us a twelve‑person team couldn’t deliver a game of this scale.
We proved them wrong." Their confidence stems from a background in low‑budget, high‑impact indie filmmaking, where punching above one’s weight is the norm. After 80 pitches, Wolf Haus finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the company.
The founders’ 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, the production house founded by Chris Roberts before his Star Citizen days. Abbott’s résumé also includes producing the Jamie Foxx‑led Fight for ’84. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s experimentation with Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt blocked by the high entry barrier for creation. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," he says.
Despite having no formal game‑development training, Dietsch fashioned a couple of modest titles before deciding to tackle something larger: a doomsday cult simulator that fused his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept, hit 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 such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
Later, he launched several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million (about $330 million USD). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote Canadian island restaurant, planning to retire. Yet a call from his old Hollywood‑hillroommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into development. Impressed by Dietsch’s demo, Wendschuh re‑entered the industry, bringing on Reid Schneider—former Warner Bros.
Games VP and now head of Raccoon Logic—as a strategic advisor, and recruiting Ubisoft Montreal veteran Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand as chief technology officer. Funding proved to be the next hurdle. The team began pitching in summer 2023, a period marked by a broader industry slowdown. "People liked what we were building, but the market was tough," Dietsch notes.
After initial outreach, the studio signed with CAA in Los Angeles, refined its pitch, and eventually closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024. Wendschuh credits CAA’s representation—also handling titles like 007: First Light—and the presence of seasoned veterans such as Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors. What truly sets Join Us apart is the development model: a core staff of just 13 full‑time members.
Dietsch explains that the team deliberately kept the roster small to ensure every voice mattered and to preserve a tight‑knit creative culture. To make an ambitious open‑world title feasible with such limited manpower, Wolf Haus invested heavily in internal tooling from day one. "Any system we build must be scalable and debuggable by a single developer," he says.
The first year of production was split between iterating on game design and constructing the pipelines that would allow those designs to scale across a six‑kilometre‑square map without collapsing under their own weight. The equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike allowed Wolf Haus to self‑fund the entire development cycle. "Our investors have a stake in the studio’s enterprise value, so they support our tool‑building ethos," Wendschuh explains.
This approach means the studio can pause to solve a problem by creating a bespoke tool, even if it temporarily slows feature progress, because the long‑term payoff is a more sustainable workflow. When asked about generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not employ it for any creative tasks.
"We believe a human touch is essential for game making. Using AI to generate assets would undermine why we get up each morning," Dietsch asserts. Wendschuh adds that the only AI they use is for mundane administrative chores 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‑owned studio. The commitment to handcrafted content is evident throughout Join Us. The entire map is manually designed, and the game features roughly 15,000 voice lines recorded by human actors—an impressive feat for an indie team. Dietsch highlights the immediacy of game development compared with film: "In movies, an idea can take years to materialise, whereas in games you can prototype a concept in a single morning and see it live in the engine instantly.
That speed is exhilarating." Wendschuh points out that film production is heavily front‑loaded, requiring high‑profile talent and studio approval before any shooting begins. While anyone can technically shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare.
By contrast, the gaming landscape has far fewer gatekeepers; a small team can ship a successful product without A‑list names. Both mediums, however, share a common creative impulse: storytelling and immersive experiences. "Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re trying to give someone a story and an emotional journey," Dietsch reflects, noting that his childhood fascination with both cameras and calculators set him on this dual‑track path.
In summary, Wolf Haus’s Join Us showcases how a blend of Hollywood experience, strategic financing, and a relentless focus on custom tools can enable a tiny team to produce a sprawling, high‑quality game—without relying on generative AI. The studio’s journey underscores the power of human creativity, disciplined engineering, and a willingness to defy industry expectations.