You may remember seeing the Join Us trailer during the Xbox Showcase in June. The clip introduced a darkly humorous cooperative cult‑simulation, where cloaked followers charge on pig‑back while firing machine guns, culminating in a shot of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make it onto the screen was the infamous snake‑gun, a quirky weapon that Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—credits to a spontaneous idea from a team member’s child. "His son asked, ‘What would a snake gun look like?’ and because we had a rapid‑scaling gun system, I threw together a prototype in about half an hour.
The kid went nuts, and the weapon stayed in the final build," Dietsch recalls. That anecdote encapsulates the kind of chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or teammates—to join a 1970s‑style cult, complete bizarre rituals, and wreak havoc across a sprawling map. It also highlights the studio’s tech‑first philosophy, which has enabled a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity, content‑rich title that would normally require a far larger staff.
"We set out to be disruptors," says Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer. "We told ourselves, ‘We don’t need a hundred hands; twelve dedicated people can do this.’ Everyone else called us crazy, but we proved them wrong." The team’s confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where doing more with less is second nature. "We grew up on indie film sets, constantly punching above our weight," Abbott explains.
After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus. Wolf Haus’s founders are steeped in Hollywood history. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who co‑founded the studio 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 shift to Star Citizen.
Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us began as a personal experiment in Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games, but the barrier to actually building something felt huge. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," Dietsch says.
Though he lacked formal training, he quickly moved from these bite‑size projects to a larger vision: a doomsday cult simulator that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and the concept was handed off to Dooma for further development. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, entered the gaming world after a career as a film producer and screenwriter. 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, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million (about $330 million USD). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote restaurant on a tiny Canadian island, intending to retire. Yet a sudden call from his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back: "Joe showed me a demo and it blew my mind. I came out of retirement to help." Through Wendschuh’s network, the studio recruited Reid Schneider—a former Warner Bros.
Games VP now heading Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet—as a strategic advisor, and hired Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was financing, which proved difficult amid a market downturn in 2023. After initial outreach, the studio partnered with CAA in Los Angeles, refined their pitch, and finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024.
The CAA connection—alongside veteran advisors like Schneider and Chartrand—proved pivotal. "My agent Derek Douglas, who represented me for twelve years in games, also heads the video‑game department at William Morris. That pedigree opened doors," Wendschuh notes. Despite the Hollywood pedigree, Join Us is being built by a lean crew of just 13 full‑time staff.
Dietsch emphasizes the importance of a small‑team culture: "Everyone has a voice, everyone touches the creative, and the game feels like a product of a tight‑knit group rather than a faceless corporation." To make an ambitious open‑world title feasible with such a tiny roster, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from day one. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person. We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive map without the project collapsing under its own weight," Dietsch explains. The first year of development was therefore split between ideating gameplay and engineering the tools that would later enable that gameplay.
Funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed the team to perfect these tools without the pressure of tight deadlines. "The equity partners financed the entire development, so the game is essentially self‑funded. We’re now only seeking a bit of project finance for marketing," says Wendschuh.
"Because the investors own equity, they’re motivated to see the studio grow in value, which aligns with our philosophy of building reusable tools. When we hit a problem we can’t solve, we build a tool to fix it. It may slow us down in the short term, but it lets a small team achieve something massive." When asked about generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not rely on it for creative work. "We believe a game needs a human touch.
Turning development over to an AI would defeat why we get up every morning," Dietsch says. Wendschuh adds that the only AI they use is for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Even Krafton, which recently branded itself an “AI‑first” company, insisted that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, fearing it could diminish artistic integrity and threaten jobs for voice actors and artists.
Indeed, Join Us features a six‑kilometre‑square hand‑crafted map and 15,000 voice lines recorded by real actors—an effort the team considers essential despite their indie status. "We wanted every line to be human‑performed; that’s a core value," Dietsch affirms. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between film and games. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and studio green‑lights.
In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours: "You can have an idea at breakfast, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly. That immediacy is exhilarating." Wendschuh notes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, costly set‑ups and a reliance on a handful of high‑profile talent to secure financing.
While anyone can shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare. Games, however, have fewer gatekeepers: "You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to make a successful game. The barrier to entry is lower, and the odds of reaching an audience are higher." Both founders agree that storytelling is the common thread linking the two mediums. "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 programming on a TI‑83, so I’ve always been a hybrid," Dietsch says.
"Whether it’s film or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging the audience. The core creative impulse remains the same."