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 charge on pig‑back, wielding machine guns, before the screen fades to an image of massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
One of the most memorable, yet omitted, moments was the appearance of a "snake gun" – a weapon that literally fires serpents. Joe Dietsch, the chief executive officer and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, explains that the idea originated from a team member’s child, who simply asked, "Can there be a snake gun?" Leveraging an in‑house tool that allowed rapid weapon prototyping, Dietsch spent roughly half an hour building the quirky armament, delighting the youngster and cementing the weapon’s place in the final game. That anecdote encapsulates the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit followers – or friends in co‑op mode – to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled 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, describes the team’s ambition as "disruptive". "We told everyone we could build a full‑scale game with just twelve people.
Most people thought we were insane," he says. Their confidence stems from a background in independent filmmaking, where they learned to achieve big results on modest budgets.
Before securing investment, the founders delivered around 80 pitches. Their perseverance paid off when Krafton and Lifelike Capital each took an equity stake in Wolf Haus, providing the capital needed to move forward.
The founding trio brings deep Hollywood connections. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of actor‑director Mel Gibson; 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 focus to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. These cinematic roots have informed the studio’s narrative sensibility and its flair for dramatic, genre‑blending concepts.
Join Us began as a personal experiment in Unreal Engine. "I discovered that Unreal was free to download and started tinkering with it using YouTube tutorials," Dietsch recounts.
Although he had no formal game‑development background, he quickly assembled a few small prototypes. The concept that persisted was a doomsday cult simulator that fused survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—a direct bridge between his love of movies and games. Creating a proof‑of‑concept prototype, Dietsch pushed the engine as far as he could, anticipating a technical wall that would force him to abandon the idea. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and introduced it to Dooma, a production partner.
Dooma’s chief financial officer and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had previously worked as a film producer and screenwriter before transitioning to games in the early 2000s. He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative services for titles such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, Wendschuh built several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire.
However, a sudden call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into development. "I saw the demo Joe had made and it blew my mind," Wendschuh says, prompting him to re‑enter the industry. He then recruited Reid Schneider, former vice‑president at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic (the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet), as a strategic advisor. Schneider brought on Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer. With a core team forming, the next hurdle was financing.
The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by an industry downturn. Despite positive reactions to the game's concept, securing funds proved difficult. The team eventually partnered with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles, which helped them refine their pitch and secure a seed round from Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024. Wendschuh notes that CAA’s representation—also handling titles like 007: First Light—combined with the credibility of veteran advisors to open doors that would otherwise remain closed.
Even with high‑profile backers, Wolf Haus has deliberately kept its staff lean: thirteen full‑time employees. Dietsch emphasizes that a small, tightly knit crew ensures everyone has a voice and can directly influence the creative direction. To make a game of Join Us’s scope feasible with such a limited headcount, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early in development. "Every system must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," he explains.
By building a robust internal toolkit, the team ensured that as features expanded across the open‑world map, the project wouldn’t collapse under its own weight. This tooling philosophy also serves future projects, allowing the studio to reuse and adapt the same infrastructure.
Funding from Krafton and Lifelike has been structured as equity, meaning the game has essentially been self‑funded. The studio has used the capital to cover development costs, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing.
"Equity partners incentivize us to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they support our tool‑building approach," says Wendschuh. "Whenever we encounter a problem we can’t solve, we build a tool for it.
It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a small team to deliver a large‑scale experience." In an industry increasingly obsessed with generative AI, Wolf Haus has taken a clear stance: they do not employ AI for creative production. Dietsch argues that a human touch is essential to game development. "Turning the creative process over to an algorithm would defeat the reason we get up in the morning," he says.
While the team uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, no generative AI tools influence design, art, or writing. Interestingly, Krafton—positioned as an "AI‑first" company—explicitly required that Wolf Haus avoid AI in the creative pipeline as a condition of investment, echoing similar policies at other Krafton‑owned studios such as Neon Giant. The studio’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map of Join Us was built entirely by hand, and the title features roughly 15,000 voice lines recorded by human actors.
This dedication to artisanal production reflects the founders’ belief that creative jobs—voice acting, art, writing—should not be displaced by automation. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between filmmaking and game development.
In film, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and extensive pre‑production. By contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours: "You can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly.
That immediacy is exhilarating." Wendschuh adds that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, short‑term bursts of activity on set, while games allow for a more iterative, continuous development cycle. He notes that anyone could technically shoot a low‑budget film, but breaking through without star power or distribution is rare. In games, the barrier to entry is lower, and a small, talented team can achieve commercial success without A‑list talent. Both founders agree that the core impulse—telling a story and delivering an experience—remains the same across mediums.
Dietsch recalls that as a child he was torn between making movies or games, a decision that ultimately hinged on a Christmas gift of a camera. He learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator, and his lifelong passion for both forms has culminated in Join Us, a project that blends cinematic flair with interactive freedom. In summary, Wolf Haus Games demonstrates how a small, Hollywood‑infused team can leverage custom tools, strategic financing, and a steadfast commitment to human‑crafted content to produce an ambitious open‑world cult simulator—without relying on generative AI. Their story underscores the potential for disruptive creativity when expertise from film, tech, and even cannabis entrepreneurship converge in the world of game development.