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 preview, robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with a massive, Cthulhu‑like mass of tentacles looming on the horizon. One element that didn’t make the final cut of the trailer was the infamous "snake gun," a weapon that Joe Dietsch, the chief executive officer and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a child’s off‑hand suggestion. According to Dietsch, a team member’s son asked, “What if there’s a gun that shoots snakes?” Thanks to a custom‑built scaling tool, Dietsch was able to prototype the weapon in roughly thirty minutes.
The result was a quirky, serpentine firearm that still appears in the game, illustrating the kind of spontaneous, chaotic design philosophy that defines Join Us. The title is an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult.
The game’s unpredictable mechanics are a direct reflection of the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a small group of developers to produce a high‑fidelity, large‑scale title. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up the studio’s ambition: “We wanted to be disruptors.
We told ourselves we could build something massive with just twelve people, even though everyone else thought it was impossible.” Their confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where the team learned to punch well above their budgetary weight. After a marathon of roughly eighty pitches, the studio finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold stakes in Wolf Haus. The founders’ Hollywood connections run deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of actor‑director 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, a production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before his shift to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us traces its origins to Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
“I discovered that Unreal Engine was free to download, and that removed a huge barrier for someone like me who loved games but had no formal training in development,” he explains. He began learning the engine through YouTube tutorials, eventually creating a few modest prototypes. The concept that stuck with him was a doomsday cult simulator—a hybrid of survival mechanics, grindhouse cinema aesthetics, and the narrative depth of his film background. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, expecting it to hit a technical wall at some point.
When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and presented it to Dooma, a partner that helped push the project forward. Dooma Wendschuh, the studio’s chief financial officer 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 services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, he launched several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (about $330 million USD). After the sale, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire.
Yet a phone call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into the industry. Upon seeing Dietsch’s demo, Wendschuh was “blown away,” prompting him to re‑enter game development. He introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros.
Games vice‑president now heading Raccoon Logic, the creators of Journey to the Savage Planet. Schneider recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, formerly a programmer at Ubisoft Montreal, to serve as chief technology officer. With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was financing—a daunting task during the industry downturn of 2023‑2024. The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, receiving positive reactions but facing a tough market.
After initial outreach, they engaged Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles and renewed their pitch efforts in 2024, eventually closing a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits the CAA connection—alongside veteran advisors like Schneider and Chartrand—for opening doors that might otherwise have stayed shut.
Despite the high‑profile backing, Join Us remains a lean operation with just thirteen full‑time staff members. The team deliberately kept the roster small to preserve a collaborative atmosphere where every voice matters and each person can directly influence the creative direction. To make such an ambitious project feasible with limited manpower, Wolf Haus invested heavily in building internal tools during the early stages of development.
"If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," says Dietsch. "We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across an open‑world map without the project collapsing under its own weight." Consequently, a significant portion of the first year was spent simultaneously designing gameplay concepts and constructing the underlying development infrastructure.
The funding model also afforded the studio the luxury of time to perfect these tools. Krafton and Lifelike’s equity investments were used to self‑fund the game’s production, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing. This arrangement aligns the investors’ interests with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the team to keep building robust tools even when it slows immediate progress. When asked about the role of generative AI, Dietsch gave a clear answer: the studio does not employ it for creative work.
"We believe a human touch is essential to game making. Turning development over to an AI would defeat the reason we get up each morning," he says. Wendschuh adds that the only AI tools they use are for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting—not for art, design, or narrative creation. Interestingly, Krafton, which has publicly positioned itself as an "AI‑first" company, specifically required that Wolf Haus not rely on generative AI for creative production.
This stance mirrors that of Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio that publicly distanced itself from the parent’s AI pivot. The studio’s commitment to human‑crafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map of Join Us was hand‑built, and the title features roughly 15,000 voice lines recorded by real actors—an effort Dietsch emphasizes as vital even for a modest indie title. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between film and game development.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and extensive pre‑production before a director ever steps onto a set. 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 notes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with massive effort spent securing high‑profile talent before a project even begins. While anyone can shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare.
Games, however, have far fewer gatekeepers; a small team can release a successful product without needing A‑list actors or directors. Both founders agree that the core creative impulse—telling stories and delivering experiences—remains the same across mediums. Dietsch recalls that as a six‑year‑old he wanted to make either movies or games, and a coin toss and a Christmas camera ultimately set him on a path that blended both passions.
Today, Join Us stands as a testament to that hybrid vision: a cult‑themed, open‑world sandbox that marries the gritty aesthetic of grindhouse cinema with the interactive freedom of modern gaming, all built by a tiny, highly skilled team that chose tools, talent, and human craftsmanship over shortcuts and AI hype.