You may remember that the trailer for Join Us debuted during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator. The teaser showed robed followers riding on pigs, brandishing machine guns, and culminated with an image of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What wasn’t shown was the infamous snake gun, a quirky weapon that CEO and creative director Joe Dietsch says was born from a simple suggestion by a team member’s child. "His son asked, ‘What would a snake gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for firearms, so within half an hour I built a gun that actually fires snakes.
The kid was thrilled, and the weapon made it into the final build," Dietsch recalls. That anecdote captures the chaotic, sandbox‑style gameplay at the heart of Join Us. Players are dropped into an open‑world survival environment where they can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑inspired cult.
The game’s design philosophy mirrors the studio’s broader approach: lean, tool‑centric, and unapologetically ambitious. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed it up succinctly: "We set out to be disruptors. While everyone assumed you needed a hundred‑person team to build a high‑fidelity title, we believed twelve could do it.
People laughed, but we proved them wrong." Wolf Haus’s confidence stems from a track record of achieving big results on modest budgets. The founders come from indie‑film backgrounds, accustomed to punching far above their weight. After 80 pitch meetings, they finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the studio. The founding trio’s Hollywood credentials 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 production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before his Star Citizen days.
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 the barrier to actually building one felt huge. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and quickly put together a few tiny prototypes," he explains. Though he lacked formal game‑dev experience, Dietsch managed to create two small titles before committing to a larger vision.
"I kept circling back to a doomsday cult simulator because it merged my love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema, essentially fusing my favorite film and game tropes into a single IP." He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming it would hit a technical wall at some point. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a production partner.
Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had previously worked as a producer and screenwriter before transitioning to 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, including the cannabis formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million (about $330 million USD). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet, in classic Hollywood fashion, a call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back.
"I was ready for beach days and dog walks, but Joe sent me a video of his prototype and it blew my mind. I came out of retirement to help." Wendschuh recruited Reid Schneider—formerly a vice‑president at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet—as a strategic advisor. Schneider, in turn, brought on Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer.
With this core in place, the studio turned its attention to financing during a market downturn. Initial outreach in summer 2023 yielded lukewarm interest, but after signing with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and re‑pitching in 2024, Wolf Haus secured seed funding from Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
Abbott credits CAA’s representation—also handling titles like 007: First Light—and the presence of industry veterans for opening doors. "Derek Douglas, our agent at CAA, had been my agent when I was making games for a dozen years and previously ran the video‑game department at William Morris. That pedigree helped us get heard." Despite the high‑profile backing, the studio remains remarkably small: only 13 full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the limited headcount is intentional, fostering a collaborative environment where everyone influences both creative and technical decisions. To make a sprawling open‑world game feasible with such a lean crew, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling early on. "Every system must be scalable and debuggable by a single person. We built a robust toolkit in the first year that let us iterate on game ideas while simultaneously constructing the infrastructure needed to support a massive map.
This tool‑first mindset also positions us for future projects." The equity‑funded model gave the studio the runway to perfect these tools without the pressure of milestone‑driven publisher payments. "Krafton and Lifelike’s investment essentially self‑funded the development. We’re now using a modest project‑finance line for marketing, but the core game was built with their equity." When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in game development—Dietsch gave a clear answer: none of the creative work uses AI.
"We believe a human touch is essential. Turning the creative process over to an algorithm would defeat the purpose of why we love making games." Wendschuh added, "We do have a few AI subscriptions for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, but nothing touches the art, design, or narrative." Even Krafton, which recently branded itself an "AI‑first" company, insisted Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, fearing it could dilute the studio’s artistic integrity. This stance mirrors that of Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio that publicly rejected AI‑driven development.
The team’s commitment to handcrafted content is evident: the six‑kilometre‑square world map is entirely hand‑built, and the game features roughly 15,000 voice lines recorded by real actors. "For a tiny indie, preserving that level of human craftsmanship was non‑negotiable," says Dietsch.
Transitioning from film to games also gave Dietsch a sense of immediacy he missed in cinema. "In film, an idea can sit on paper for years before you get green‑lit, assemble a cast, and finally shoot. With 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 notes that film production is heavily front‑loaded: securing a few high‑profile directors or actors is often the make‑or‑break factor for studio approval. While anyone can technically shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare. Games, by contrast, have far fewer gatekeepers. "You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to launch a successful title; the barrier to entry is lower, and the potential for indie success is much higher," he explains.
Both mediums, however, share a common creative drive: storytelling and immersion. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games—it boiled down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas. I learned to program on a TI‑83, so I’ve always been straddling both worlds.
Ultimately, whether you’re crafting a film or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. That core mission never changes."