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 hail of gunfire, and the sequence culminates with an ominous vision of massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One detail that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous "snake gun," a weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a child’s off‑hand suggestion.
"My teammate’s son asked, ‘What would a snake‑firing gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for weapons, so within half an hour I built it. The kid was blown away, and we kept the gun in the game," Dietsch recounts. That anecdote encapsulates 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 cult empire.
It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has enabled a small team to produce a high‑fidelity title that would traditionally require a much larger staff. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, describes the team’s mindset as deliberately disruptive. "We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred developers; twelve can do it.’ Most people laughed, thinking it impossible," he says.
Their confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where they learned to achieve cinematic impact on shoestring budgets. After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving the project the financial footing it needed. 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 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 been a gamer my whole life, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge," he explains. He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, built a few modest prototypes, and eventually gravitated toward a doomsday cult simulator concept that merged survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming it would eventually hit a technical wall.
When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and introduced it to Dooma, a production partner. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had previously produced and written for film before moving into games in the early 2000s, contributing writing to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Wendschuh later founded 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 old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back. "I was looking at the game Joe had built, and it completely blew my mind. That’s what got me out of retirement," he says.
Wendschuh then brought in Reid Schneider, former Warner Bros. Games VP and now head of Raccoon Logic, as a strategic advisor, and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. Funding proved to be the next major hurdle. The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn.
Despite positive reactions to the concept, securing capital was challenging. After initial outreach, Wolf Haus enlisted the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and resumed pitching in 2024, eventually closing a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits the CAA connection—and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand—for opening doors.
"Derek Douglas, our CAA agent, had represented me during my twelve‑year game‑making career and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris," Wendschuh notes. What truly sets Join Us apart is its development model: a core team of just 13 full‑time staff.
"We entered the project with a clear sense of scope and wanted to keep the team intimate, so every voice mattered and everyone could touch the creative process," Dietsch explains. To achieve such ambition with limited manpower, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person.
We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive open world without the project collapsing under its own weight," he says. Roughly half of the first year was spent simultaneously designing gameplay and engineering the tools that would make that design feasible.
The equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed Wolf Haus to self‑finance the development, using the investors’ capital to cover production costs. "We’re now only seeking a small amount of project finance for marketing; the game itself was built entirely with their money," Wendschuh explains. This structure aligns the investors’ interests with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the team to continue building reusable tools even when they slow immediate progress.
When asked about generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not rely on it for any creative work. "We believe a game needs a human touch. Handing creation over to an AI would defeat the reason we get up every morning," Dietsch says. Wendschuh adds that the studio only uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting.
Interestingly, Krafton—despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company—specifically required that Wolf Haus not employ generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The studio’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and voice work. The six‑kilometre‑square map was built entirely by hand, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, a point the team feels is essential even for an indie title.
Dietsch reflects on the contrast between film and games, noting the immediacy of the latter. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and a massive production schedule.
In game development, an idea can be prototyped in a single morning, placed into the engine, and instantly visualised. This rapid feedback loop fuels his enthusiasm. Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, high‑stakes set work that often hinges on securing a handful of A‑list talent to greenlight a project. While anyone can shoot a low‑budget film with a backyard camera, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare.
By contrast, the video‑game market has fewer gatekeepers, making it easier for a small, talented team to achieve commercial success without celebrity endorsements. Both men agree that the core creative impulse—telling a story and delivering an experience—remains the same across mediums. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games; it boiled down to a coin toss and maybe getting a camera for Christmas.
I learned programming on a TI‑83, so the love for both has always been there," Dietsch says. "Whether you’re crafting a film or a game, you’re creating an experience, telling a narrative, and engaging an audience.
That fundamental drive doesn’t change."