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, brandishing machine guns, before the screen fades to an eldritch vision of massive, Cthulhu‑like 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‑gun look like?’" Dietsch recalls. "Because we built a modular weapon system, I could prototype a snake‑shooting gun in roughly thirty minutes. The kid went wild, and we kept the weapon in the final build." This anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op—to build a 1970s‑style doomsday cult.
It also illustrates Wolf Haus’s technology‑first philosophy, which has enabled a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would traditionally require a much larger staff. Michael Abbott, the studio’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred people; twelve will do.’ Most people laughed, thinking it impossible." Their confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on shoestring budgets.
"We come from indie filmmaking, where you constantly punch above your weight," Abbott says. After 80 pitch meetings, Wolf Haus finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving the studio the financial runway to continue development. 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, a production company started by Chris Roberts before he turned his attention to Star Citizen.
Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt blocked from actually making one," he explains. He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few tiny prototypes, and eventually settled on a doomsday‑cult survival concept that fused his love of grindhouse cinema with game mechanics.
He created a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and the idea quickly gained momentum. The studio’s narrative director and CFO, Dooma Wendschuh, brings a hybrid background of film and tech. After a stint as a screenwriter and producer, he founded Sekretagent Productions, providing writing services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. In the 2010s he launched several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million.
Following that windfall, he bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a call from his old Hollywood‑hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into game development when he saw Dietsch’s demo and was instantly captivated. Wendschuh then recruited Reid Schneider—former Warner Bros. Games VP and current head of Raccoon Logic, the studio behind Journey to the Savage Planet—as a strategic advisor, and hired Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer.
With this core team in place, the next hurdle was funding, a challenge made tougher by the industry downturn of 2023‑24. After initial outreach, the studio partnered with CAA for representation, re‑pitched in 2024, and finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. The partnership with CAA, which also represents titles like 007: First Light, proved instrumental.
"My agent Derek Douglas had represented me for twelve years in games and even ran the video‑game department at William Morris," Wendschuh notes. This high‑level backing, combined with veteran advisors, gave Wolf Haus credibility despite its modest headcount.
Today, Wolf Haus operates with just 13 full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team model is intentional: "We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative, to feel ownership of the game." To make an ambitious open‑world survive‑and‑cult title feasible with such a lean crew, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from day one.
"Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch says. The first year of development was therefore split between ideating gameplay and building the internal tools that would later allow the world to expand without collapsing under its own complexity.
Funding from Krafton and Lifelike has allowed the studio to self‑finance the bulk of development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing. "Our investors have equity stakes, so they’re motivated to see the studio’s enterprise value grow," explains Wendschuh. "That’s why they support our tool‑heavy approach, even if it slows short‑term progress—it enables us to deliver a large game with a tiny team." When asked about the role of generative AI—a hot topic in game development—the team answered unequivocally: they do not use it for creative work.
"We believe a game needs a human touch. Automating design would defeat the reason we get up every morning," Dietsch says.
Wendschuh adds that the only AI tools they employ are mundane productivity aids like calendar scheduling and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton, which has publicly branded itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline as a condition of their investment.
This stance mirrors that of Neon Giant, another Krafton‑backed studio that has distanced itself from AI‑driven development. The studio’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s massive six‑kilometre‑square map and its 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by human actors. "Even as a small indie, we felt it was crucial to keep the experience fully human," Dietsch asserts.
Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between film and games as creative mediums. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, subject to studio approvals, casting, and scheduling. In game development, by contrast, an inspiration can be prototyped in a matter of hours, placed directly into the engine, and instantly visualised.
This immediacy, he says, is exhilarating. Wendschuh points out that film production is heavily front‑loaded: securing a handful of A‑list talent is often the gatekeeper to greenlighting a project. While anyone can technically shoot a movie with a backyard camera, breaking through without star power or a distribution deal is rare.
Games, however, have far fewer gatekeepers. "You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to make a successful game," he notes, highlighting the democratising potential of interactive media.
Both founders agree that the core creative drive—telling stories and delivering experiences—remains the same across both 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 smiles. "Whether it’s a film or a game, you’re crafting an experience, a narrative, and engaging an audience. The medium changes, but the purpose stays the same."