You may remember seeing the Join Us trailer during the Xbox Showcase in June. The clip introduced a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulation, featuring robed followers riding pigs, brandishing machine guns, and culminating in a shot of Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
What the trailer didn’t reveal was the infamous snake gun, a detail that Joe Dietsch, CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, proudly recounts. "One of the developers’ kids came up with the idea of a snake‑firing weapon," Dietsch explains. "We had a modular gun system, so within half an hour I built a prototype that actually shoots snakes.
The kid was blown away, and the weapon made it into the final game." That anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or other players in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult empire. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has enabled a high‑fidelity, large‑scale title to be produced by a remarkably small crew. "We set out to be disruptors," says Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer. "We told everyone we could deliver a AAA‑ish experience with just twelve people.
Most people thought we were crazy." The team’s confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on shoestring budgets. "We come from indie filmmaking, where you learn to punch well above your weight," Abbott notes.
After eighty pitches, Wolf Haus finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the studio. 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 his Star Citizen venture. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s experimentation in Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt there was a huge barrier to creating my own," he says.
He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few small prototypes, and eventually gravitated toward a doomsday cult simulator concept that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He created a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming he would soon hit an insurmountable technical wall.
When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, the company that would later become a financial and narrative partner. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s, contributing writing to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. He later founded several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million.
After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, planning a quiet retirement. Yet a call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back. "I was looking at the video Joe sent me and it completely blew my mind," Wendschuh recalls, prompting him to join the project. He introduced Reid Schneider—former Warner Bros.
Games VP and now head of Raccoon Logic—to serve as strategic advisor, and Schneider recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With the core team in place, the next hurdle was financing, a task made tougher by an industry downturn that began in 2023. Initial pitches generated interest but also skepticism. The studio eventually enlisted CAA (Creative Artists Agency) in Los Angeles, refined its pitch deck, and secured a seed round from Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024.
Abbott credits the CAA connection and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for the successful raise. "Derek Douglas, our CAA agent, had represented me for twelve years and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris," says Wendschuh. Despite the high‑profile backing, Join Us remains a product of a lean operation—just thirteen full‑time staff members.
"We entered the project with a clear understanding of scope and wanted to keep a small‑team culture where every voice matters and everyone touches the creative process," Dietsch explains. To make such an ambitious game feasible with a tiny crew, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling from day one.
"Any system we build must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch says. The studio spent the first year simultaneously designing gameplay concepts and engineering the internal tools that would allow those concepts to scale across a six‑kilometre‑square open world without collapsing under their own weight.
The equity funding model gave the studio the runway to perfect those tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s investment financed the entire development; we’re essentially self‑funded now," notes Wendschuh. "We’ve started to take on a modest amount of project finance for marketing, but the core development budget came from our equity partners." Both investors share the studio’s ethos of tool‑driven development.
"Our backers want the studio to increase its enterprise value, so they support our heavy investment in proprietary tools," Wendschuh adds. "Whenever we encounter a problem we don’t know how to 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 game of this magnitude." When asked about the role of generative AI—a hot topic in game development—Dietsch gives a clear answer: none. "We believe a human touch is essential.
Handing creative decisions over to an AI would defeat the purpose of why we love making games," he says. Wendschuh concedes the studio uses AI only for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting, not for any creative work.
Interestingly, Krafton, which markets itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly discouraged the use of generative AI in Wolf Haus’s creative pipeline. "They wanted to be sure they weren’t funding a studio that relied on AI for core content creation," Wendschuh notes, echoing a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio.
The team is also committed to preserving jobs for artists and voice talent. "Generative AI threatens roles like voice actors and illustrators, and that’s not the future we want," says Wendschuh. Consequently, the six‑kilometre map in Join Us is handcrafted, and the game features 15,000 voice lines performed by human actors—a point of pride for a studio of its size.
Dietsch reflects on the contrast between film and game creation. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring countless approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent. In games, an idea can be prototyped in a morning, inserted into the engine, and instantly experienced.
"That immediacy is exhilarating," he says. Wendschuh adds that film production is heavily front‑loaded: securing a director or star can be the make‑or‑break factor for a movie’s greenlight. While anyone can shoot a video with a backyard camera, breaking through without major names or distribution is rare. By comparison, the barriers to launching a successful indie game are lower; you don’t need an A‑list actor or director to attract an audience.
Both founders agree that the core creative drive—telling stories and delivering experiences—remains the same across mediums. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games. It boiled down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera," Dietsch recalls.
"Whether it’s film or interactive media, the goal is to engage, entertain, and tell a story. That hasn’t changed."