The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation. In the clip, robed followers zip around on pigs, wielding machine guns, before the screen fades to a massive, Cthulhu‑like mass of tentacles. What didn’t make the edit was the infamous snake gun, a feature 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‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a modular weapon system, so I threw together a prototype in about thirty minutes.
The kid went wild, and the gun stuck around," Dietsch recalls. This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult empire. 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 far larger staff.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build a AAA‑level experience with just a dozen people. Most people laughed and called it impossible." Their confidence wasn’t unfounded. The team’s background in indie filmmaking taught them to punch well above their weight, and after 80 pitches they finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving Wolf Haus the runway it needed.
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, the production company started by Chris Roberts before his foray into Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx.
This blend of cinematic experience and entrepreneurial grit set the stage for their venture into interactive entertainment. Join Us began as a personal experiment in Unreal Engine. "I discovered Unreal was free to download and thought, why not give it a try? I’d been a gamer my whole life, but the barrier to actually creating something seemed huge," Dietsch explains.
He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, built a few tiny prototypes, and eventually settled on a doomsday cult simulator—a concept that fused his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. The initial proof‑of‑concept was rough but promising, and after showing it to Abbott, the idea was handed off to Dooma for further development.
Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, entered the picture after a varied career that spanned film production, screenwriting, and video‑game narrative work. He founded Sekretagent Productions, contributing writing to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, he built a cannabis‑formulation company, Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million. After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, a call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the industry.
Wendschuh was immediately impressed by Dietsch’s demo and agreed to join the effort. To strengthen the studio, Wolf Haus recruited Reid Schneider—former VP at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic—and Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer who took on the role of chief technology officer. With this core team in place, the next hurdle was financing, a challenge amplified by a market downturn in 2023. After an initial wave of pitches, the studio partnered with CAA for representation and returned to the investors’ table in 2024, eventually closing a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
The partnership with CAA proved instrumental. Their agent Derek Douglas, who had represented Wendschuh during his twelve‑year stint in game development, also headed the video‑game department at William Morris.
This network, combined with the strategic guidance of Schneider and Chartrand, helped Wolf Haus navigate a difficult funding climate. What truly sets Join Us apart is the way it’s being built. With only 13 full‑time staff members, the studio has embraced a lean, collaborative culture where everyone contributes to both creative and technical decisions. Early in development, the team invested heavily in building reusable tools.
"Any system we create has to be scalable and debuggable by a single person," says Dietsch. "We spent the first year not just designing the game, but also constructing the toolset that would let a tiny team expand the world without the project collapsing under its own weight." Funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed Wolf Haus to self‑finance the entire development, only tapping external project finance later for marketing purposes.
Because the investors hold equity, they are motivated to see the studio increase in enterprise value, which aligns with Wolf Haus’s philosophy of building robust internal tools rather than outsourcing solutions. "Whenever we hit a problem we don’t know how to solve, we build a tool for it," Wendschuh explains.
"It may slow us down short‑term, but it empowers us to achieve AAA‑scale results with a micro‑team." Despite the industry’s buzz around generative AI, Wolf Haus deliberately avoids it in the creative pipeline. "We believe a game needs a human touch," Dietsch asserts.
"Using AI to generate core content would defeat the purpose of why we love making games." Wendschuh adds that while the studio subscribes to AI services for mundane tasks like calendar management, none of those tools touch the artistic side of development. Krafton, which has marketed itself as an "AI‑first" company, actually discouraged the use of generative AI in Wolf Haus’s creative workflow, preferring to back a studio that relies on human talent.
This stance mirrors that of Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio that publicly rejected the parent’s AI pivot. The commitment to human‑crafted content is evident in the game’s scope.
The six‑kilometer‑square map is entirely hand‑modeled, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by professional actors, not synthetic voices. Dietsch emphasizes that even as a modest indie, preserving that level of craftsmanship was non‑negotiable.
Transitioning from film to games, Dietsch appreciates the immediacy games provide. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and lengthy production schedules.
In contrast, a concept can be prototyped in a single morning, inserted into the engine, and instantly visualized. This rapid feedback loop fuels the studio’s iterative process. Wendschuh notes that filmmaking is heavily front‑loaded, with massive coordination required to secure a handful of high‑profile talent before a project ever sees the light of day. While anyone can shoot a low‑budget film with a backyard camera, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare.
Game development, however, has far fewer gatekeepers; a small team can release a polished product without needing A‑list actors or directors. Both mediums, though, share a core creative impulse: storytelling and immersion. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games; it came down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera," Dietsch reflects.
"Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. The tools change, but the goal stays the same."