The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulation. In the clip, robed followers charge on pig‑mounted platforms, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with an image of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
What the audience didn’t see was the infamous snake‑gun, a quirky weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a child’s imagination. "One of the developers’ kids asked, ‘What would a snake‑gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for firearms, so within about thirty minutes I built a gun that actually fires snakes. The kid went wild, and we kept the weapon in the final build," Dietsch recounts.
That anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can amass followers—or invite friends in co‑op—to form a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a tiny team to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff. "We set out to be disruptors," says Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer. "Everyone told us it was impossible to deliver a game of this scope with just twelve people.
We came from indie‑film backgrounds where we routinely over‑delivered on shoestring budgets," Abbott explains. After 80 pitch meetings, the studio finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold stakes in Wolf Haus.
The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs 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 production company founded by Chris Roberts before he turned his attention to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx.
Join Us originated when Dietsch began tinkering with Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," he says.
Even without formal training, Dietsch managed to ship a couple of small games before deciding to tackle something bigger. The seed of Join Us was a “doomsday cult simulator” that merged his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics, aiming to fuse the storytelling of film with the interactivity of games. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming he would soon hit an insurmountable technical wall. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a partner studio that helped refine the concept.
Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s. He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative work for titles like 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 roughly C$430 million (US$330 million).
After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote restaurant on a tiny Canadian island, intending to retire. Yet, in classic Hollywood fashion, an unexpected call from his former roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into game development. "I saw the prototype Joe had built, and it completely blew me away.
It convinced me to come out of retirement," Wendschuh recalls. He introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games VP now heading 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—a challenge made tougher by the industry downturn of 2023‑24. The studio began pitching in summer 2023, receiving positive feedback but facing a skeptical market.
After enlisting CAA (Creative Artists Agency) as representation and re‑pitching in 2024, they finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh believes CAA’s connections, along with the credibility of veterans like Schneider and Chartrand, were decisive. "My agent Derek Douglas, who also represented me during my twelve‑year game‑development career, helped open doors that would otherwise have stayed closed," he notes.
Despite the high‑profile backing, Join Us remains a product of a remarkably small crew—thirteen full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the team deliberately kept the group tight to ensure every voice mattered and that the final product felt like the work of a distinct, cohesive collective. To make such an ambitious open‑world possible with limited manpower, Wolf Haus invested heavily in internal tooling from day one. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person.
We built a robust toolkit so that when features proliferate across the map, the project doesn’t collapse under its own weight," Dietsch explains. This tooling phase consumed much of the first development year, as the team simultaneously designed gameplay concepts and the software needed to realize them.
The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s investments have essentially self‑funded the game. We’re now adding a modest amount of project finance for marketing, but the core development was covered by their equity stakes," says Wendschuh. He adds that because investors benefit from the studio’s increased enterprise value, they encourage the studio’s tool‑building ethos, even if it slows immediate progress.
When asked about generative AI, Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not employ it in creative development. "We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate core game content would defeat the purpose of why we love making games," he states. Wendschuh concedes that the team uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, but not for any artistic or design work.
Krafton, which markets itself as an “AI‑first” company, actually required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline as a condition of their investment. This mirrors a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio that publicly distanced itself from the parent’s AI pivot. Both Wendschuh and Dietsch stress their commitment to human‑crafted content.
The six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us was hand‑built, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by real actors—an effort they consider vital even for an indie‑scale title. Dietsch reflects on the contrast between film and games, noting the immediacy of the latter. "In film, you spend years developing an idea before you ever see it on set, and you must secure directors, actors, and studio approval.
In games, you can prototype an idea in the morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly. That rapid feedback loop is exhilarating." Wendschuh adds that filmmaking is heavily front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations to lock down A‑list talent, whereas game development faces far fewer gatekeepers.
"You don’t need a blockbuster star or a famous director to get a game funded; you just need a compelling experience," he says. Ultimately, both mediums share a common creative drive: to tell stories and craft experiences that engage audiences.
Dietsch’s childhood fascination with both cameras and code set him on a path that could have led to either industry, and he believes the underlying goal remains the same regardless of format.