The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator. In the clip, robed followers zip around on pig‑mounted platforms, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates in a nightmarish vision of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What the audience didn’t see was the infamous "snake gun"—a weapon that actually fires serpents. According to Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, the idea came from a junior team member’s child.
“His son asked, ‘What would a snake‑gun look like?’ We had a modular gun‑building tool, so within half an hour I assembled a functional snake‑shooter. The kid was thrilled, and the weapon stayed in the final build,” Dietsch recalls. That anecdote encapsulates the chaotic, sandbox‑style gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world survival experience where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑styled cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has allowed a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their mindset: “We set out to be disruptors. While everyone told us a twelve‑person team couldn’t build a game of this scope, we knew from our indie‑film background that punching above our weight was possible.” The team’s journey began with 80 pitches before finally landing equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital. Both investors took a stake in Wolf Haus, providing the financial runway needed to turn the concept into a full‑blown product. Wolf Haus’s leadership is steeped in Hollywood pedigree.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University, where he roomed with Louie Gibson—son of Mel Gibson—and together they co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie features Happy Hunting and Manifest West. Abbott, meanwhile, is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to the Star Citizen universe. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx.
The seed of Join Us was planted when Dietsch began experimenting with Unreal Engine. “Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt there was a huge barrier to actually creating one,” he explains.
He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, built a few modest prototypes, and eventually gravitated toward a doomsday cult simulator—a concept that fused his love of grindhouse cinema with survival‑game mechanics. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and the two set the project in motion. The studio’s narrative director and CFO, Dooma Wendschuh, entered the gaming world after a career in film production and screenwriting. In the early 2000s he founded Sekretagent Productions, supplying story work for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
Later, he launched several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million (about US$330 million). After that windfall, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a call from his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back: “Joe showed me a video of the game and it blew my mind. I came out of retirement to help.” Through Abbott’s network, the studio recruited Reid Schneider—former Warner Bros.
Games VP and now head of Raccoon Logic—and Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as strategic advisor and chief technology officer respectively. With this core team in place, the next hurdle was financing. The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn. “People liked what we were doing, but the market was tough,” Dietsch says.
After securing representation from CAA and a second round of pitches in 2024, they finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. The partnership with CAA, which also represents titles like 007: First Light, proved invaluable.
“My agent Derek Douglas had represented me for twelve years in games and headed the video‑game department at William Morris,” notes Wendschuh. This industry clout, combined with the expertise of Schneider and Chartrand, helped the studio convince investors of their vision. What truly sets Join Us apart is its development model: a full‑time staff of just thirteen people. Dietsch emphasizes that the team deliberately kept the group small to maintain a collaborative atmosphere where every voice matters and everyone can touch the creative process.
To make such an ambitious project feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early on. “If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” Dietsch explains. “We built a toolkit that lets one developer iterate without the project collapsing under its own weight.” The first year of development was therefore split between designing gameplay and engineering the tools that would sustain it.
Funding from Krafton and Lifelike was structured as equity, allowing the studio to self‑finance the bulk of development. “The investors are motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they support our tool‑building ethos,” says Wendschuh.
This approach means the team can address any technical obstacle by creating a bespoke solution, even if it slows short‑term progress, because it preserves the ability to deliver a large‑scale game with a tiny crew. When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in game development—the team’s stance is clear: they avoid it for creative work. “We believe a human touch is essential.
Using AI to generate core content would defeat why we get up each morning,” Dietsch says. Wendschuh adds that while they may use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management, they never employ it for design, writing, or art.
Interestingly, Krafton, which has branded itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required that Wolf Haus not rely on generative AI for creative production. This mirrors a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map was built by hand, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors—an effort the team deemed vital despite their indie status.
Dietsch reflects on the differences between film and games: “In film, an idea can sit on paper for years before you get green‑lit, and you need to convince high‑profile talent to join. In games, you can prototype an idea in the morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly. That immediacy is exhilarating.” Wendschuh concurs, noting that film production is front‑loaded with intense, gate‑kept phases, whereas games have fewer gatekeepers: “You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to make a successful game.” Both founders agree that storytelling is the common thread. “Whether you’re making a movie or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience,” says Dietsch, who grew up programming on a TI‑83 calculator and dreaming of either medium.
Their journey demonstrates how a blend of Hollywood heritage, savvy tech development, and unconventional funding can enable a small team to create a sprawling, high‑quality title without leaning on generative AI.