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 pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with a monstrous, Cthulhu‑like mass of 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 asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’" Dietsch recalls. "Because we had built a modular weapon system, I could prototype a snake‑gun in roughly thirty minutes.
The kid went wild, and the weapon stayed in the final build." That anecdote perfectly captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox survival where you can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s tech‑first mindset, 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 it up: "We set out to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build a AAA‑ish experience with just twelve people. Most people laughed, but we proved them wrong." The team’s confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on shoestring budgets.
"We come from indie film backgrounds and are used to punching well above our weight," Abbott explains. After 80 pitch meetings, Wolf Haus finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the studio.
The founders’ Hollywood roots run 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 his Star Citizen venture. 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 with Unreal Engine. "Unreal is free to download, and I’d always loved games, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge," he says.
He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few tiny prototypes, and eventually settled on a doomsday‑cult concept that merged his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He created a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming it would soon hit a technical wall. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and passed it on to Dooma, the studio’s early‑stage partner.
Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had previously produced and written for films before moving into games in the early 2000s. He founded Sekretagent Productions, which supplied narrative work for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, Wendschuh launched several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million (about $330 million USD).
After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire and enjoy a quiet life. Yet, in classic Hollywood fashion, a call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back. "He said a friend had made a video game and wanted me to look at it. The demo blew my mind and convinced me to come out of retirement," Wendschuh recounts.
He introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games vice‑president 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 funding—a daunting task given the industry’s downturn in mid‑2023. The studio began pitching that summer, initially receiving polite interest but few commitments. After enlisting the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) as representation, Wolf Haus returned to the pitch circuit in 2024 and eventually closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh believes the CAA connection, along with veteran advisors like Schneider and Chartrand, was pivotal.
"My agent at CAA, Derek Douglas, had represented me during my twelve‑year game‑development career and previously led the video‑game department at William Morris," he notes. Despite the high‑profile backing, Join Us is being built by only thirteen full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team structure is intentional: "We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative process, and to feel ownership over the final product." To make such an ambitious open‑world game feasible with a lean crew, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling from day one.
"Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. "We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive map without the project collapsing under its own weight.
The first year was as much about developing those tools as it was about designing gameplay." The equity financing model gave the studio the runway to perfect these tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s investment funds the development directly, so the game is essentially self‑funded," says Wendschuh.
"We’re now adding a modest amount of project finance for marketing, but the core development budget came from our equity partners." One of the benefits of equity funding, according to Wendschuh, is that investors share the studio’s long‑term vision. "They want us to build tools that increase the studio’s enterprise value, even if it slows short‑term progress. That philosophy lets us tackle a project of this scale with a tiny team." When asked about generative AI, Dietsch gives a clear answer: the studio does not rely on it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential.
Using AI to generate assets would undermine why we get up every morning to make games," he says. Wendschuh adds that the team only uses AI for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting, never for art, design, or writing. Even Krafton, which has branded itself an "AI‑first" company, insisted that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline. "Our investors wanted to be certain we weren’t using AI to replace human creators," Wendschuh notes, echoing a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio.
The commitment to human‑crafted content is evident in Join Us’s six‑kilometre‑square map, which was hand‑modeled, and its 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by real actors. "For a small indie title, preserving that level of handcrafted detail was non‑negotiable," Dietsch emphasizes.
Dietsch also reflects on the differences between film and game development. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and studio green‑lights. In games, an inspiration can be prototyped in a matter of hours and tested instantly in the engine.
"That immediacy is exhilarating," he says. Wendschuh points out that film production is front‑loaded with intense, high‑stakes work to secure a few marquee names, whereas games face fewer gatekeepers. "Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without star power or distribution, success is rare. By contrast, a well‑made game can find an audience without A‑list talent," he explains.
Both founders agree that storytelling is the common thread linking their two passions. "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," Dietsch recalls.
"I learned to program on a TI‑83, so both mediums have always felt like natural extensions of my creativity. Ultimately, whether you’re crafting a film or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. That core purpose never changes."