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 ride pigs, fire machine guns, and eventually confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One detail that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous snake gun, a quirky weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a child’s off‑hand suggestion. "My team member’s son asked, ‘What would a snake‑gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for firearms, so within about thirty minutes I built a gun that actually launches snakes.
He was thrilled, and we kept it in the game," Dietsch recalls. This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit AI followers or friends to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has allowed a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a far larger staff.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, describes the team’s ambition as deliberately disruptive. "We told everyone we could build a AAA‑level game with just twelve people.
Most people laughed and said it was impossible," he says. Their confidence stems from a background in independent filmmaking, where they learned to achieve big results on shoestring budgets. After eighty pitch meetings, the studio finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving Wolf Haus the financial runway to continue development.
The founders’ Hollywood credentials run deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of actor‑director Mel Gibson, and together they 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 move 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. "I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering with it using YouTube tutorials," he explains. Although he had never built a game before, he managed to create a few small prototypes before deciding to tackle something more ambitious: a doomsday cult simulator that fused his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and the two took the concept to Dooma, a partner studio that helped shape the early vision. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, entered the video‑game arena after a career in film production and screenwriting. 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 company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million.
After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a sudden call from his former Hollywood roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into game development.
Wendschuh’s enthusiasm for Join Us convinced Reid Schneider—formerly a vice‑president at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic—to join as a strategic advisor. Schneider recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With this core team in place, the studio turned its attention to funding.
Pitching began in the summer of 2023, a period marked by an industry downturn. Despite the challenging climate, the team’s persistence paid off, and they closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024. The partnership with CAA, which also represents titles like 007: First Light, proved instrumental.
"Our agent Derek Douglas had represented me for over a decade in games, and his connections opened doors that would have otherwise stayed closed," Wendschuh notes. What truly sets Join Us apart is the scale of its creation: only thirteen full‑time staff members. The studio deliberately kept the team small to preserve a collaborative atmosphere where every voice matters.
To make such an expansive game feasible, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset. "Any system we build must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," says Dietsch. The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and constructing the internal toolset that would later allow the open‑world map to expand without collapsing under its own complexity. Funding from Krafton and Lifelike was structured as equity, meaning the studio could self‑finance the development while retaining creative control.
"Our investors want the studio to increase in enterprise value, so they support our tool‑building ethos," explains Wendschuh. This approach lets the team solve problems by building bespoke tools rather than outsourcing or cutting corners, even if it slows short‑term progress.
When asked about generative AI, Dietsch gives a clear answer: the studio does not employ it for creative work. "We believe a game needs a human touch. Relying on AI would defeat the reason we get up each morning," he says.
Wendschuh adds that the only AI they use is for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton—positioning itself as an “AI‑first” company—insisted that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring similar statements from its other studios such as Neon Giant. Both founders stress the importance of human‑crafted content.
The six‑kilometre‑square map in Join Us is entirely hand‑built, and the game features roughly 15,000 voice lines recorded by real actors. "That level of handcrafted detail matters to us, even as a small indie studio," says Dietsch. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between filmmaking and game development.
In film, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and studio green‑lights. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours and instantly tested in the engine, offering a immediacy that he finds exhilarating.
Wendschuh observes that movies are front‑loaded with pre‑production hurdles—securing A‑list talent, negotiating studio deals—whereas games face fewer gatekeepers, allowing smaller teams to achieve success without marquee names. Ultimately, both mediums share a common creative drive: delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience.
Dietsch’s childhood fascination with both cameras and code led him to a career where he can blend cinematic storytelling with interactive gameplay, proving that a small, determined team can indeed disrupt the industry without relying on generative AI.