You may remember seeing the Join Us trailer during the Xbox Showcase in June. The clip introduced a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator, featuring robed followers riding pig‑mounted vehicles, brandishing machine guns, and culminating in a shot of massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t appear in the teaser was the infamous snake gun, a feature that Joe Dietsch, CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, proudly explains. "One of the developers’ kids came up with the idea of a snake‑shooting weapon," Dietsch recalls.
"He asked, ‘Can we make a snake gun?’ We have a rapid‑prototyping tool for weapons, so in about thirty minutes I built a gun that fires snakes. The kid was blown away, and the weapon stayed in the final build." That anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay you can expect from Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game where players recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’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, sums it up: “We set out to be disruptors.” "We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred‑person team; twelve talented people can do this.’ Most people thought we were crazy and said it was impossible," Abbott says.
Yet the founders have a track record of punching far above their budget. "Our background is indie film, where you learn to stretch every dollar," Abbott adds. After 80 pitches, they finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold stakes in Wolf Haus.
The founding trio brings deep Hollywood connections. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of actor‑director Mel Gibson; 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 company founded by Chris Roberts before his work on Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx.
Join Us began as a hobby project for Dietsch in Unreal Engine. "I discovered Unreal was free to download and started experimenting with YouTube tutorials," he says.
Though he had never built a game before, he managed to create a few small prototypes before deciding to tackle something larger. The core concept—a doomsday cult simulator that blends survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—kept pulling him back. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, expecting to hit a technical wall at some point. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter immediately took it to Dooma, a partner studio.
Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had previously worked as a producer and screenwriter in film before moving into games in the early 2000s, contributing writing to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Wendschuh later founded 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, intending to retire.
Yet a sudden call from his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, changed his plans. "He told me a friend had made a video game. I watched the demo 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, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet. Schneider joined as a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, formerly a programmer at Ubisoft Montreal, to serve as chief technology officer. With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was financing, which proved difficult during the industry downturn of 2023‑24.
The studio began pitching in summer 2023, initially receiving polite interest but few commitments. After signing with CAA in Los Angeles, they renewed their outreach in 2024 and eventually closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
Abbott believes the CAA connection—whose roster includes titles like 007: First Light—was crucial, as was the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand. "Our agent Derek Douglas had represented me for twelve years and previously led the video‑game division at William Morris," Wendschuh notes.
What truly sets Join Us apart is the way it’s being built: only 13 full‑time staff members. "We entered the project with a clear sense of scope and a desire to keep the team small, so every voice matters and everyone can touch the creative process," says Dietsch.
To make such an ambitious open‑world game feasible for a tiny crew, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early on. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. "We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive map without the project collapsing under its own weight. Much of the first year was spent simultaneously designing gameplay and engineering the tools that would enable it." The funding structure gave the team the runway to perfect those tools.
Krafton and Lifelike’s equity investment financed the entire development, with a modest amount of project finance later added for marketing. "Because our investors own equity, they’re motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value, which means they support us in building extensive tooling," Wendschuh says. "Whenever we encounter a problem we don’t know how to solve, we simply create a tool to address it.
It may slow development, but it lets a small team deliver a game of this scale." When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in game development—Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not use it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Turning development over to an AI would defeat the reason we get up in the morning," he asserts.
Wendschuh adds that the only AI they employ is for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, not for any artistic or design decisions. Even Krafton, which has branded itself as an "AI‑first" company, insisted that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in its creative pipeline.
This mirrors the stance of Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio that publicly distanced itself from the parent’s AI pivot. Both teams emphasize respect for creative professionals and fear that AI could displace voice actors and artists.
Indeed, Join Us’s six‑kilometre‑square map is entirely handcrafted, and its 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors—a point the team considers a badge of honour for an indie‑scale project. Dietsch reflects on the contrast between film and games: "In film, you write a script, wait years for financing, then finally shoot. You need big‑name talent to get green‑lit. With games, you can prototype an idea in a morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly.
The gatekeepers are far fewer, so the odds of a small team delivering a hit are much higher." Both mediums share a common creative impulse—to tell a story and give an audience an experience. Dietsch’s childhood wish to make either movies or games came down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera. He taught himself programming on a TI‑83 calculator, and that early fascination has guided his career.
Whether through film or interactive media, he believes the goal remains the same: to engage, entertain, and immerse the audience in a compelling narrative.