You may remember seeing the Join Us trailer during the Xbox Showcase back in June. The clip introduced a darkly humorous cooperative cult‑simulation, featuring robed followers riding pigs, brandishing machine guns, and culminating in a shot of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What wasn’t shown was the infamous snake gun, a detail that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, proudly points out. "One of the team members’ kids came up with the idea," Dietsch recounts.
"He asked, ‘What if there was a snake‑gun?’ We have a tool that lets us prototype weapons lightning‑fast, so within about thirty minutes I built a gun that fires snakes. It blew his mind, and it stayed in the final game." That anecdote perfectly captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a small group to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, sums it up succinctly: "We set out to be disruptors." "We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred‑person team; twelve is enough.’ Most people thought we were insane," Abbott says.
"But we’ve been punching well above our weight for years in indie film, so we knew how to stretch limited resources." The studio’s journey to funding was long and winding. After roughly eighty pitches, they finally secured equity investments from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus. The founders bring deep Hollywood connections to the table. 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 films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s experiments in Unreal Engine.
"I discovered Unreal was free to download and thought, ‘Why not give it a try?’" he explains. "I’d been a gamer my whole life, but creating something felt out of reach. I started watching YouTube tutorials and tinkering on my own." Even without formal training, Dietsch managed to finish a few small prototypes before deciding to tackle something bigger.
"The idea of a doomsday cult simulator kept resurfacing because it merged my love for survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema, blending my film and gaming passions into a single IP." He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming he would eventually hit a technical wall. He showed the demo to Abbott, who then presented it to Dooma, the company that would later become a key partner. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, began his career as a producer and screenwriter in Hollywood before transitioning to 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 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 and walk his dog on the beach.
Yet, in true Hollywood fashion, fate pulled him back. "Out of the blue, my old roommate Michael Abbott called.
He said, ‘A buddy of mine made a video game.’ I checked it out, and it blew my mind. It convinced me to come out of retirement." Wendschuh 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 in place, the next hurdle was financing, which proved difficult amid an industry downturn in the summer of 2023. "People liked what we were building, but the market was tough," Dietsch notes. The studio enlisted CAA (Creative Artists Agency) in Los Angeles to help with pitching.
After another round of presentations in 2024, they finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits the CAA connection—alongside seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand—for opening doors.
"Derek Douglas, our agent at CAA, was also my agent when I spent twelve years making games. He previously led the video‑game division at William Morris." Despite the Hollywood pedigree, Join Us is notable for being built by only thirteen full‑time staff members. "We entered the project with a clear sense of scope and a desire to keep the team small, so every voice mattered and everyone could touch the creative core," says Dietsch. This intimate environment, however, required a massive investment in custom tooling.
"If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. "We spent a huge portion of the first year inventing tools that let us prototype ideas quickly while also ensuring the game could grow across a large open world without collapsing under its own weight." The funding structure gave the studio the breathing room to perfect those tools. "Krafton and Lifelike are equity partners; their money funded the entire development.
We’re now adding a small amount of project finance for marketing, but the core development was fully covered by their investment," Wendschuh says. Equity backing also aligns investor incentives with the studio’s ethos of tool‑building. "Whenever we encounter a problem we don’t know how to solve, we build a tool for it. It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a tiny team to achieve something massive." When the industry talks about tiny development teams, generative AI often comes up as a shortcut.
Wolf Haus deliberately avoided it. "We don’t use generative AI for creative work.
The human touch is essential to us. We love making games, and handing that over to an algorithm would defeat the purpose of why we get up each morning," Dietsch asserts.
Wendschuh adds, "We have a few AI subscriptions for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, but none of that touches the creative process." Interestingly, Krafton—while branding itself as an "AI‑first" company—insisted that Wolf Haus not employ generative AI in game creation. This mirrors statements from Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio that publicly denied using AI for its projects. "We respect creative professionals and don’t want AI to replace voice actors or artists," Wendschuh says.
"The six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us is hand‑crafted, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human talent. That mattered to us, even as a small indie studio." Dietsch notes a key advantage of games over film: immediacy. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and extensive pre‑production. "With games, you can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly.
That instant feedback loop is exhilarating." Wendschuh points out that film production is heavily front‑loaded. "You need to lock down high‑profile directors or actors before a studio will green‑light a project. Even if you rent a camera and shoot in your backyard, without big names or distribution, success is unlikely." By contrast, the game industry has fewer gatekeepers.
"You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to make a hit game. The barriers to entry are lower, and the chances of reaching an audience are higher," he explains. Both mediums share a core creative drive: storytelling and immersion.
Dietsch reflects, "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games. It boiled down to a coin toss and maybe getting a camera for Christmas.
I learned to program on a TI‑83, so I’ve always loved both. Whether it’s film or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging the audience. The medium changes, but the goal stays the same."