The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers zip around on pigs, fire machine guns, and ultimately confront colossal, 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 suggested a snake‑shooting weapon," Dietsch recounts. "We had a rapid‑scaling gun system, so in about thirty minutes I built a gun that fires snakes. The kid was thrilled, and the weapon stayed in the final game." This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival title where players can recruit followers—or other players in co‑op mode—to their 1970s‑style cult.
It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a high‑fidelity experience to be produced by a surprisingly small crew. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed it up: “We set out to be disruptors.” "We told everyone we could build a AAA‑ish game with just twelve people," Abbott says. "Most people laughed and said it was impossible." Yet the team’s history of achieving big results on modest budgets gave them confidence. Coming from indie film backgrounds, they were accustomed to punching far above their weight.
After 80 pitches, they finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus. 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 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 began as a personal experiment in Unreal Engine.
"I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering after watching YouTube tutorials," Dietsch explains. Although he had no formal game‑dev experience, he managed to create a few small prototypes before committing to a larger vision: a doomsday cult simulator that fused survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, ran into technical roadblocks, and showed the result to Abbott, who then introduced it to Dooma. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, started his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s.
He founded Sekretagent Productions, which supplied writing services 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 company Ebbu, sold for 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. Impressed by Dietsch’s demo, Wendschuh helped bring on strategic advisor Reid Schneider (formerly of Warner Bros.
Games) and CTO Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran programmer from Ubisoft Montreal. Securing financing proved challenging amid a market downturn. The team began pitching in summer 2023, received positive reactions but faced a cautious investor climate.
After partnering with CAA in Los Angeles and refining their pitch throughout 2024, they closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits the CAA connection and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for the success.
Despite the high ambitions, Join Us is being built by only 13 full‑time staff members. "We entered the project knowing exactly what we wanted to achieve," says Dietsch, emphasizing the importance of a tight‑knit culture where every voice matters and everyone touches the creative process. To make such a scope feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from day one.
"Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch notes. The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and constructing the underlying toolset, a strategy that also prepares the studio for future projects.
The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools. Krafton and Lifelike’s capital financed the entire development, with only a modest portion of project finance earmarked for marketing.
"Equity investors care about the studio’s enterprise value, so they encourage us to build robust tools," Wendschuh explains. "When we hit a problem we don’t know how to solve, we simply build a tool to address it.
It may slow us down short‑term, but it enables a small team to deliver a game of this magnitude." When asked about generative AI, Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not rely on it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Turning development over to an AI would defeat the purpose of why we love making games," he says. Wendschuh adds that they only use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, not for any artistic contribution.
Interestingly, Krafton, which has branded itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. The team’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map is entirely hand‑built, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors—a point of pride for a studio of this size. Dietsch reflects on the contrast between film and games: "In film, you write an idea, wait years for green‑light, then fight for a set.
With games, you can prototype an idea in the morning, see it in the engine the same day, and iterate instantly. That immediacy is exhilarating." Wendschuh notes that film production is front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations for A‑list talent, whereas game development faces far fewer gatekeepers. "You don’t need a star actor or director to make a successful game; the barriers to entry are lower, which democratizes creation." Both mediums share a core creative impulse: storytelling and immersion.
Dietsch recalls that as a child he wanted to make either movies or games, and a coin flip plus a Christmas camera set his path. He learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator, blending technical curiosity with narrative ambition.
Whether through cinema or interactive entertainment, his goal remains the same—to craft experiences that engage, move, and entertain audiences.