The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulation. In the clip, robed followers ride pig‑mounted platforms, unleash machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with an image of enormous, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
What the audience didn’t see was the infamous snake‑gun, a weapon that, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—originated from a child’s off‑hand suggestion. "One of the team members’ kids asked, ‘What would a snake‑gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a new weapon in about thirty minutes, so I built a gun that actually fires snakes. The kid was blown away, and the weapon stayed in the final build," Dietsch recalls. This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival title where players can recruit followers—or fellow players—to join a 1970s‑style cult.
The game’s development philosophy mirrors that spirit. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, says the studio set out to be “disruptors.” "We told ourselves we didn’t need a hundred‑person studio; twelve talented people could pull it off," he explains. Skeptics dismissed the claim as impossible, but the team’s background in low‑budget indie filmmaking gave them confidence. "We grew up making movies on shoestring budgets, constantly punching above our weight," Abbott adds.
After 80 pitch meetings, Wolf Haus secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving the studio the financial runway to realize its vision. The founders’ Hollywood roots run deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who later co‑founded Wolf Haus and 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 Star Citizen venture.
Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us began as a personal experiment in Unreal Engine. "I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering after watching countless YouTube tutorials," Dietsch says. Though he had no formal training, he built a few small prototypes before committing to a larger concept: a doomsday cult simulator that fused survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics.
He created a proof‑of‑concept demo, ran into technical roadblocks, and showed the result to Abbott, who then introduced it to Dooma, the studio’s early backer. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, transitioned from film to games in the early 2000s by founding Sekretagent Productions, which supplied writing for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, he built several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, sold for roughly C$430 million.
After the sale, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a call from his former Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into development. "I watched the demo Joe sent me, and it blew my mind.
I couldn’t stay retired," he says. He then recruited former Warner Bros.
Games VP Reid Schneider as a strategic advisor and hired Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. Funding proved arduous amid a market downturn.
The team began pitching in summer 2023, receiving polite interest but few commitments. After aligning with CAA in Los Angeles and refining their pitch, they secured seed financing from Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024.
Wendschuh credits the CAA connection—whose roster includes titles like 007: First Light—and veteran advisors for opening doors that would otherwise have remained closed. Despite the high‑profile backing, Wolf Haus remains a lean operation of just 13 full‑time staff. The studio deliberately kept the team small to preserve a collaborative culture where every member can influence design decisions. To make a large‑scale, high‑fidelity game possible with such limited manpower, they invested heavily in proprietary tooling from day one.
"Every system must be scalable and debuggable by a single developer," Dietsch explains. The first year of development was split evenly between conceptualizing gameplay and building the internal tools that would later allow the world to expand without collapsing under its own complexity.
The equity model with Krafton and Lifelike gave Wolf Haus the breathing room to perfect these tools. "The money we raised was used to self‑fund the game, with a small portion later allocated to marketing," Wendschuh notes. Because investors own equity, they are motivated to see the studio increase in enterprise value, which aligns with Wolf Haus’s philosophy of building reusable tools for future projects.
This approach sometimes slows immediate progress, but it enables the studio to achieve ambitious goals with a tiny crew. When asked about generative AI, Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not employ AI for creative work.
"We believe a game needs a human touch. Hand‑crafting the experience is why we get up each morning," he says.
Wendschuh adds that the only AI they use is for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Krafton, despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, echoing similar stances from other Krafton‑owned studios such as Neon Giant.
The commitment to human‑generated content extends to the game's massive map and voice work. The six‑kilometre‑square world of Join Us was entirely hand‑crafted, and its 15,000 voice lines were recorded by real actors, not synthetic voices.
This decision reflects the team’s respect for artistic labor and a desire to protect jobs for voice talent and artists. Dietsch also contrasts the immediacy of game development with the protracted timelines of filmmaking.
In cinema, an idea can take years to reach production, requiring approval from studios, directors, and actors. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours and tested directly in the engine. "You can have an idea at breakfast and see it in the world by lunch," he says, highlighting the rapid feedback loop that fuels his enthusiasm for interactive media.
Wendschuh observes that film production is front‑loaded with intense, high‑stakes coordination, often hinging on securing a few marquee names to greenlight a project. While anyone can shoot a backyard movie, the odds of it achieving commercial success without established talent are slim. Games, however, have fewer gatekeepers; a small indie team can release a polished product directly to players without needing A‑list actors or directors.
This democratization, he argues, makes the medium more accessible and rewarding for creators willing to take risks. Both founders agree that the core creative impulse—telling a story and delivering an experience—remains the same across film and games. Dietsch recounts that as a child he was torn between making movies or games, a decision that ultimately hinged on a Christmas gift of a camera. He taught himself programming on a TI‑83 calculator, blending his love of both mediums.
"Whether you’re crafting a film or a game, you’re shaping an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. The tools change, but the heart of the work stays the same," he concludes.