The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation. In the clip, robed followers charge on pig‑mounted platforms, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the scene culminates with a terrifying image of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the edit was the infamous snake gun, a quirky weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, proudly cites as a hallmark of the title.
“One of our developers’ kids came up with the idea of a snake‑shooting gun,” Dietsch recalls. “We had a modular weapon system that let us prototype something in about thirty minutes. I built a gun that fires snakes on the fly, and the kid was blown away.
It stayed in the final build.” That anecdote captures the chaotic, sandbox‑style gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world survival experience where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑inspired cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a high‑fidelity, large‑scale project to be produced by a surprisingly small team. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: “We wanted to be disruptors.
We told everyone we could deliver a AAA‑level game with just twelve people. Most people laughed and said it was impossible.” The team’s confidence stems from a history of doing big things on shoestring budgets. “We come from indie filmmaking, where you constantly punch above your weight,” Abbott explains. After 80 pitches, Wolf Haus finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold stakes in the studio.
The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, the 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, a production company founded by Chris Roberts before he moved on to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
Join Us originated from Dietsch tinkering in Unreal Engine. “I discovered Unreal was free to download and started experimenting with YouTube tutorials,” he says.
Though he had no formal game‑dev background, he managed to build a few small prototypes before deciding to tackle something larger. The seed of the project was a “doomsday cult simulator” that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—a concept that married his love of movies and games into a single intellectual property. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming he would soon hit a technical wall.
When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, the studio’s early‑stage partner. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had previously worked as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s, providing writing for 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 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. Yet, in classic Hollywood fashion, a call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the industry. “I saw the prototype Joe built and it blew my mind.
It convinced me to come out of retirement,” Wendschuh says. He then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games VP now heading Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet.
Schneider joined as a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer. With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was financing—particularly challenging during the industry downturn of 2023. The studio began pitching in the summer of that year, initially receiving positive feedback but facing a tight market.
After partnering with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) in Los Angeles and refining their pitch, they secured a seed round from Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024. Wendschuh credits the CAA connection—whose roster includes titles like 007: First Light—and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for smoothing the fundraising process. “My agent at CAA, Derek Douglas, had represented me during my twelve years in games and previously led the video‑game department at William Morris. That relationship helped open doors,” he notes.
Despite the pedigree, Join Us is being built by only thirteen full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team approach was intentional: “We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative, and to feel ownership of the final product.” To make such an ambitious title feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early on. “Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person.
We built a robust toolkit so that when features expand across the open world, the project doesn’t collapse under its own weight,” Dietsch explains. He adds that the first year of development was split between ideation and tool creation, a strategy that also lays groundwork for future projects.
The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools. “Krafton and Lifelike provided capital that we used to self‑fund the game. We only turned to external project finance for marketing later on,” says Wendschuh. He notes that equity investors are motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value, which aligns with Wolf Haus’s philosophy of building reusable tools rather than taking shortcuts.
When asked about generative AI, a hot topic in game development, Dietsch is unequivocal: “We don’t use generative AI for any creative work. The human touch is essential to us. We love making games ourselves; outsourcing that to an algorithm would defeat the purpose.” Wendschuh adds that the studio only uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, never for art, design, or narrative.
Interestingly, Krafton—positioned as an “AI‑first” company—explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline. This mirrors a similar stance taken by Krafton’s subsidiary Neon Giant, which publicly denied using AI for its own titles. Both studios argue that AI could jeopardize jobs for voice actors and artists, a concern Wendschuh echoes. He stresses that Join Us’s six‑square‑kilometre map and its 15,000 voice lines were handcrafted by human talent, a point the team views as a badge of pride for an indie‑scale effort.
Dietsch reflects on the contrast between film and games: “In film, an idea can sit on paper for years before you get permission, funding, and a cast to bring it to life. With games, you can prototype an idea in the engine the same morning and see it in action instantly. That immediacy is exhilarating.” Wendschuh agrees, noting that filmmaking is heavily front‑loaded with securing high‑profile talent and studio approval, whereas games have fewer gatekeepers. “Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without a star or distributor, success is unlikely.
In games, the barriers are lower; you don’t need an A‑list actor or director to create a hit.” Both founders trace their passion back to childhood. Dietsch recalls wanting to make either movies or games at age six, a decision that hinged on whether he received a camera for Christmas. He taught himself programming on a TI‑83 calculator, blending his love of both mediums.
He concludes that whether through film or interactive media, the core goal remains the same: to craft an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience.