The trailer for Join Us first caught many eyes during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation. In the clip, robed followers charge on pigs while firing machine guns, culminating in a dramatic reveal of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One element that didn’t make the final cut of the trailer, however, was the infamous snake‑gun—a weapon that sprang from a spontaneous idea and quickly became a permanent fixture in the game. Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, recounts the moment: “One of the team members’ kids asked if we could make a snake‑gun.
Because we had built a modular gun system, I was able to prototype a weapon that launches snakes in roughly thirty minutes. The kid was blown away, and we kept the weapon in the final build.” This anecdote epitomises the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can amass followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult empire.
The game’s wild mechanics are only part of the story. Behind the scenes, Wolf Haus has pursued a deliberately technology‑centric strategy that lets a tiny crew produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff. Michael Abbott, the studio’s chief operating officer, explains the philosophy: “We set out to be disruptors.
Everyone told us that a twelve‑person team couldn’t deliver a game of this scope, but we were convinced it was possible.” Abbott and his colleagues draw on a background in independent filmmaking, where working with modest budgets is the norm. “We’re used to punching well above our weight,” Abbott says, noting that the studio completed roughly eighty pitches before finally securing equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital.
Both investors took a stake in Wolf Haus, providing the capital needed to bring the project to life. The founders’ Hollywood connections run deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, the son of Mel Gibson, who later co‑founded Wolf Haus and co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie features Happy Hunting and Manifest West. Abbott is the son of renowned makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, a production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to the Star Citizen universe. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx.
Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine. “Unreal Engine was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt the barrier to creation was huge,” he explains. “I started learning through YouTube tutorials, built a few tiny prototypes, and eventually the idea of a doomsday‑cult simulator kept resurfacing because it merged my love of survival games with grindhouse cinema.” He built a proof‑of‑concept demo and showed it to Abbott, who then introduced 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, contributing writing to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
Later, he founded several tech ventures, most notably a cannabis formulation company that sold for C$430 million. After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, Wendschuh was lured back into the industry by an unexpected call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott.
“I thought I was done, but when I saw the demo Joe had built, it blew my mind and pulled me back in,” he says. Wendschuh then brought on Reid Schneider—formerly a vice‑president at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic—and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. Funding proved to be the next major hurdle.
The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn. Despite the challenging climate, the team persisted, eventually signing with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and securing a seed round from Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024. Abbott notes that CAA’s representation, which also includes titles like 007: First Light, helped open doors, while veteran advisors such as Schneider and Chartrand added credibility.
What truly sets Join Us apart is the scale of its ambition relative to the size of the team—just thirteen full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the studio entered the project with a clear understanding of its scope and a desire to keep the team lean and collaborative: “Everyone has a voice, everyone touches the creative, and the game feels like it was made by a single, tightly knit group.” To make such a massive undertaking feasible, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset. “Any system in the game has to be scalable and debuggable by a single developer,” Dietsch explains.
“We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across an open‑world map without the project collapsing under its own weight.” The first year of development was therefore split between ideating gameplay and constructing the underlying tools that would support future projects. The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the breathing room to perfect these tools.
“Krafton and Lifelike are equity partners; their investment financed the entire development,” says Wendschuh. “We’re now only using a small amount of project finance for marketing. The rest of the game was built entirely with their capital.” This structure aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term vision, encouraging the continued development of in‑house tools even if they temporarily slow down production. When asked about the role of generative AI—a hot topic in the industry—both Dietsch and Wendschuh are unequivocal: the studio does not employ AI for any creative tasks.
“We believe a human touch is essential,” Dietsch says. “Using an AI to generate assets would defeat the purpose of why we love making games.” Wendschuh adds that the only AI they use is for mundane administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton, which markets itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required that Wolf Haus refrain from using generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s massive six‑kilometre‑square map and its 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by human actors.
“That level of manual effort was non‑negotiable for us, even as a small indie studio,” Dietsch asserts. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between filmmaking and game development. In cinema, ideas can take years to materialise, subject to layers of approval and the need for high‑profile talent. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning and instantly visualised within the engine.
“The immediacy is exhilarating,” he says. Wendschuh concurs, noting that film production is heavily front‑loaded, requiring extensive pre‑production work and star power to secure financing, whereas games face fewer gatekeepers and can succeed without A‑list names.
Both founders trace their passion back to childhood. Dietsch recalls wanting to make either movies or games at the age of six, his path ultimately decided by a coin toss and a Christmas camera. He taught himself programming on a TI‑83 calculator, a skill that laid the groundwork for his dual love of storytelling across mediums. “Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience,” he concludes.
This shared creative impulse continues to drive Wolf Haus as they push the boundaries of what a small, dedicated team can achieve without relying on generative AI, proving that ingenuity, perseverance, and a strong toolset can rival the output of much larger studios.