You may remember catching the Join Us trailer during the Xbox Showcase in June, where a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulation was on display. The teaser showed robed cultists riding pigs, brandishing machine guns, and culminated in a shot of massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the cut, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—was the infamous snake gun. "One of the team members’ kids came up with the idea and asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a new weapon in about thirty minutes, so I built a gun that fires snakes on the fly.
The kid was blown away, and the weapon stayed in the final build," Dietsch recounts. That anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has enabled a high‑fidelity, large‑scale title to be produced by a remarkably small crew. "We set out to be disruptors," says Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer.
"Everyone told us it was impossible to deliver a game of this scope with only twelve people. We’d spent years on indie films, learning to punch far above our budget, so we knew we could make it happen," Abbott explains. After a marathon of 80 pitches, the studio 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, 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 veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company founded by Chris Roberts before his Star Citizen days.
Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us began as a side project for Dietsch while he was tinkering in Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I’d been a gamer my whole life, but the barrier to actually making a game felt huge. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a couple of tiny prototypes," he says. Those early experiments sparked the concept of a doomsday cult simulator—a mash‑up of survival mechanics and grindhouse cinema that merged his film and gaming passions into a single intellectual property.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, expecting it to hit a technical wall quickly. When he showed it to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and took the demo to Dooma, a partner studio. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had a background in film production and screenwriting before moving into games in the early 2000s, providing writing for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Wendschuh later founded several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million.
After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, planning to retire and walk his dog on the beach. Yet, in classic Hollywood fashion, a call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the industry. "I watched the demo Joe had built and it blew my mind. I came out of retirement to help," Wendschuh says.
He introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games VP now heading Raccoon Logic, and Schneider recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer.
With the core team in place, the next hurdle was financing—an uphill battle during a market downturn. The studio began pitching in summer 2023, receiving positive feedback but also skepticism. After enlisting CAA (Creative Artists Agency) as representation and re‑pitching in 2024, Wolf Haus finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits the CAA connection—whose roster includes titles like 007: First Light—and the credibility of veterans Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors.
Despite the high‑profile backing, Join Us remains a product of a lean operation: just thirteen full‑time staff members. "We entered the project with a crystal‑clear sense of scope and wanted to keep a small‑team culture where every voice matters and everyone can touch the creative aspects," Dietsch notes.
To make such an ambitious game feasible, the studio invested heavily in internal tools early on. "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 open world without the project collapsing under its own weight," he explains.
This tooling philosophy not only supports Join Us but also lays the groundwork for future Wolf Haus titles. The equity funding model gave the studio breathing room to perfect these tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s investment essentially self‑funded the game.
We’re now using a bit of project finance for marketing, but development has been covered entirely by their equity," says Wendschuh. He adds that investors are motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value, which aligns with Wolf Haus’s ethos of building robust tools rather than cutting corners. When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in game development—Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not rely on it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential.
Using AI to generate core content would defeat the purpose of why we love making games," he says. Wendschuh concurs, noting that AI is only used for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton, which has branded itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly discouraged the use of generative AI in Wolf Haus’s creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant.
Both founders stress the importance of preserving jobs for voice actors and artists. The six‑kilometer‑square map in Join Us is handcrafted, and the game’s 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human performers—a point of pride for a studio of this size. Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between filmmaking and game development. In film, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and studio green‑lights.
In games, an inspiration can be prototyped in a single morning, instantly visualized in the engine. "That immediacy is exhilarating," he says. Wendschuh adds that while film production is front‑loaded with intense, high‑stakes set work and reliance on a handful of A‑list talent, games have far fewer gatekeepers. "You don’t need a blockbuster star or a famous director to launch a successful game," he observes.
Both agree that the core creative drive—telling stories and delivering experiences—remains the same across mediums. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games. It came down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas. I learned programming on a TI‑83, so both worlds have always been part of me.
Ultimately, whether you’re crafting a film or a game, you’re shaping an experience and a narrative for the audience," Dietsch concludes.