You may remember the Join Us trailer that debuted during the Xbox Showcase in June. The clip introduced a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator, featuring robed followers riding pigs, wielding machine guns, and culminating in a shot of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
What the audience didn’t see was the infamous snake‑gun, a detail that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, proudly recounts. "One of the team members’ kids came up with the idea and asked, ‘What would a snake‑gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a new weapon in about half an hour, so I built a gun that literally fires snakes.
The kid was blown away, and the weapon stayed in the final build," Dietsch explains. This anecdote encapsulates the kind of chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to a retro‑70s‑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 don’t need a hundred‑person studio; twelve talented people can do this.’ Most people laughed and said it was impossible." Their confidence isn’t naïve; the founders come from indie‑film backgrounds where they learned to achieve cinematic ambitions on shoestring budgets. Abbott notes, "We’re used to punching well above our weight." After 80 pitch meetings, the team finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus. The founding trio’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, the production company founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt there was a huge barrier to actually creating something," he says. He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few small prototypes, and eventually settled on the concept of a doomsday cult simulator—a mash‑up of survival mechanics and grindhouse cinema that merged his favorite film and game tropes into a single intellectual property. He created a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming it would soon hit a technical wall.
When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter immediately took it to Dooma, a production partner. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s, founding Sekretagent Productions, which contributed writing to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. In the 2010s he launched 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 and spend his days walking his dog on the beach. Yet, in classic Hollywood fashion, an unexpected call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the industry.
"I was looking at the game Joe had built and it completely blew my mind. It convinced me to come out of retirement," Wendschuh recalls. He then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros. Games and current head of Raccoon Logic (the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet).
Schneider joined as a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran programmer from Ubisoft Montreal, to serve as chief technology officer. With the core team in place, the next hurdle was financing—a daunting task during the industry downturn of 2023‑24.
The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, initially reaching out on their own before enlisting CAA (Creative Artists Agency) in Los Angeles as representation. After a second round of pitches in 2024, they closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits the CAA connection—whose roster includes titles like 007: First Light—and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors.
Despite the high‑profile backing, Join Us remains a product of a lean operation: just 13 full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team philosophy was intentional: "We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative process, and to feel ownership over a game that truly reflects our collective vision." To make such an ambitious open‑world title feasible with limited manpower, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset. "If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains.
The first year of development was therefore split between designing gameplay concepts and building the underlying toolset that would allow those concepts to scale across a six‑kilometre‑square map without the project collapsing under its own weight. The equity‑funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools.
"Krafton and Lifelike’s investment funds the game directly, making it essentially self‑funded. We’re now adding a modest amount of project finance for marketing, but the core development was covered by their equity stakes," Wendschuh notes. This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the team to keep building reusable tools rather than taking shortcuts.
When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in game development—Dietsch gives a clear answer: 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 purpose of why we love making games," he says. Wendschuh adds that while the team may use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, it never touches the artistic side of development. Interestingly, Krafton, which has branded 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 extends to the game's massive world and voice work. The six‑kilometre‑square map is entirely hand‑modeled, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices. "That level of human involvement mattered to us, even as a small indie studio," Wendschuh asserts. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between film and games.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and massive budgets before a director ever sees it on set. In contrast, a game developer can prototype an idea in a single morning, drop it into the engine, and immediately see it in action. This immediacy fuels his enthusiasm for interactive media. Wendschuh points out that film production is heavily front‑loaded: securing a few high‑profile directors or actors is often the gatekeeper to green‑lighting a project.
While anyone can technically shoot a movie with a backyard camera, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare. Games, however, have far fewer gatekeepers. "You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to make a successful game," he says, highlighting the democratizing potential of interactive media. Both founders agree that the core creative drive is the same across the two mediums: storytelling and delivering an experience.
"When I was six, I wanted to make either games or movies; it came down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas," Dietsch reminisces. He learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator and has since blended his love for both forms. "Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re trying to tell a story, engage an audience, and create an experience. That fundamental goal doesn’t change." In summary, Wolf Haus’s journey demonstrates how a small, Hollywood‑savvy team can leverage custom tools, strategic financing, and a staunch commitment to human‑crafted content to produce a large‑scale, high‑quality game without resorting to generative AI.
Their story underscores the power of interdisciplinary talent, the value of lean development, and the enduring appeal of hands‑on creativity in an industry increasingly tempted by automation.