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, wield machine guns, and eventually confront massive Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One element that didn’t make the public cut was the "snake gun," a weapon that fires serpents.
According to Joe Dietsch, CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, the idea came from a team member’s child. "His son asked, ‘Can there be a snake gun?’ We had a modular gun system, so in about thirty minutes I built a snake‑shooting weapon. He was thrilled, and it stayed in the final game," Dietsch recalls.
That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit of Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game that lets players recruit followers—or other players in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a tiny 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 ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred people; twelve is enough.’ Most people thought we were crazy." The team’s confidence stems from a background in low‑budget, high‑impact projects.
"We come from indie film, where you learn to punch well above your weight," Abbott explains. After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold stakes in Wolf Haus. 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 shift to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
"Unreal Engine was free to download, and I’d always loved games, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge. I started watching YouTube tutorials and tinkering," he says. Though he had no formal training, Dietsch managed to put together a few small prototypes before deciding to tackle something bigger: a doomsday cult simulator that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming it would eventually hit a technical wall.
When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a partner studio that helped refine the vision. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, entered the gaming world after a career as a film producer and screenwriter. In the early 2000s he founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative 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 roughly C$430 million (US$330 million).
After that windfall he bought a remote restaurant on a tiny Canadian island, intending to retire. But a sudden call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back: "I watched the demo Joe had made and it blew my mind, so I came out of retirement to help." Wendschuh then introduced Reid Schneider—former Warner Bros.
Games VP and now head of Raccoon Logic—to serve as strategic advisor, and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With this core in place, the studio turned to fundraising during a market downturn in the summer of 2023. Initial outreach yielded interest but no commitments.
After signing with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and re‑pitching in 2024, Wolf Haus secured seed financing from Lifelike Capital and Krafton. The CAA connection proved valuable; the agency also represents titles like 007: First Light, and its video‑game division head, Derek Douglas, had been Wendschuh’s agent during his twelve‑year game‑development stint. "Having seasoned game veterans on board gave us credibility during a tough funding climate," Wendschuh notes.
Despite the high ambitions, Join Us is being built by just 13 full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team philosophy is intentional: "We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative, and to feel ownership of the final product." To make such a sprawling experience possible with limited manpower, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset.
"Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. The studio spent the first year simultaneously designing gameplay concepts and engineering the internal toolset that would keep the project from collapsing under its own complexity.
This tool‑centric approach also aligns with the equity‑funding model: Krafton and Lifelike provide capital that the studio uses to build its own infrastructure, allowing the game to be essentially self‑funded. "Our investors want the studio to increase enterprise value, so they support our extensive tool development," says Wendschuh.
"When we encounter a problem we don’t know how to solve, we build a tool for it. It may slow us down short‑term, but it enables a tiny team to deliver a large‑scale product." When asked about generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not employ it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential.
Using AI to generate assets would defeat why we get up every morning," Dietsch says. Wendschuh adds that they only use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton—publicly positioning itself as an "AI‑first" company—specifically required that Wolf Haus not rely on generative AI for core development, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. The studio’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game world itself.
The six‑kilometre‑square map was built entirely by hand, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices. "Even as a small indie, preserving that human element was non‑negotiable," Dietsch asserts. Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between film and game creation. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and studio green‑lights.
In game development, an inspiration can be prototyped within hours: "You can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, see it instantly, and start iterating. That immediacy is exhilarating." Wendschuh points out that film production is front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations for a handful of A‑list talent, whereas games face fewer gatekeepers. "Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without big names or distribution, success is unlikely. In games, you don’t need an A‑list actor or director to reach an audience," he explains.
This democratisation, combined with the duo’s shared childhood passion for both mediums—Dietsch learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator and dreamed of making movies or games—fuels their belief that storytelling transcends format. "Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging the audience. The medium changes, the purpose stays the same," Dietsch concludes.