The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, giving viewers a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator. In the clip, robed followers charge on pig‑back while firing machine guns, and the sequence culminates in a shot of massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacles looming over the scene. One element that didn’t make the final edit was the infamous "snake gun," a weapon that shoots serpents instead of bullets.
Joe Dietsch, the chief executive officer and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, explains how that oddball idea came to life. "One of the developers’ kids asked, ‘What would a snake gun look like?’ We had a modular weapon system that lets us prototype a new gun in under thirty minutes, so I built a snake‑shooting weapon on the spot.
The kid 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 where players can recruit AI followers or friends into a 1970s‑style doomsday cult. The same story also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a tiny crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff. Michael Abbott, the chief operating officer, sums up their ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors.
We told everyone we could build a AAA‑ish experience with just twelve people, and most people laughed. But we’d already proven, in indie film, that a small team can punch far above its weight." Wolf Haus’s founders have a long history of doing big things on shoestring budgets. Before turning to games, they cut their teeth on independent movies, learning to stretch every dollar and make creative compromises that still delivered compelling stories.
After eighty pitch meetings, the studio finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving them the financial runway to finish Join Us. The leadership team’s Hollywood roots run deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University in California alongside Louie Gibson, the son of actor‑director Mel Gibson and a fellow co‑founder of Wolf Haus. The two 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 he moved on to the Star Citizen universe. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. This blend of film experience and entrepreneurial grit gave the studio a unique perspective on storytelling and production. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
"I discovered that Unreal Engine was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt blocked by the cost and complexity of making one," he says. He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, built a few small prototypes, and eventually settled on the idea of a doomsday cult simulator—a concept that merged his love of grindhouse cinema, survival mechanics, and dark comedy into a single intellectual property.
The proof‑of‑concept demo was rough but promising. Dietsch showed it to Abbott, who immediately recognized its potential and presented it to Dooma, a partner studio.
Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had previously worked as a producer and screenwriter in Hollywood before moving into games in the early 2000s. He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative support for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, he built several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million).
After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, Wendschuh was pulled back into the industry when his old roommate Michael Abbott called, saying a friend had made a game that blew his mind. That call led Wendschuh to bring Reid Schneider—former Warner Bros.
Games VP and current head of Raccoon Logic—on board as a strategic advisor, and to recruit Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was financing during a market downturn.
The studio began pitching in summer 2023, a period marked by industry contraction. "People liked what we were building, but the timing was tough," Dietsch admits.
After initial outreach, Wolf Haus signed with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles, which helped refine their pitch and secure a seed round from Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024. Wendschuh notes that CAA’s representation—also handling titles like 007: First Light—plus the credibility of veterans like Schneider and Chartrand, were decisive factors in closing the deal.
Despite the high‑profile backing, the studio has deliberately kept its headcount low. Thirteen full‑time staff members work on Join Us, each wearing multiple hats.
"We wanted a small‑team culture where everyone has a voice and can touch every aspect of the creative process," says Dietsch. To make such an ambitious open‑world game feasible with a limited crew, Wolf Haus invested heavily in internal tooling from day one. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains.
The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and building the pipelines that would allow those ideas to scale across a six‑kilometre‑square map without the project collapsing under its own weight. The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the breathing room to perfect those tools. Krafton and Lifelike’s capital was used to self‑fund the entire development, with only a small tranche of project finance earmarked for marketing later on.
"Our investors are motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they support our tool‑building ethos," Wendschuh says. "When we hit a problem we can’t solve, we build a custom tool. It may slow us down in the short term, but it lets a tiny team achieve results that would normally require dozens of engineers." In an era where many studios tout generative‑AI shortcuts, Wolf Haus has taken a contrary stance. "We don’t use generative AI for any creative work," Dietsch declares.
"Game development is a craft we love, and handing it over to an algorithm would defeat the purpose of why we get up in the morning." Wendschuh adds that the studio’s AI subscriptions are limited to 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, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant.
The commitment to human‑crafted content extends to the game's world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map was hand‑sculpted, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by real actors, not synthetic voices.
"We wanted a tactile, human feel, even as an indie studio," Dietsch emphasizes. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between film and interactive media. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and a massive production schedule before the director ever sees the final product. In games, however, an inspiration can be prototyped in a matter of hours and tested instantly within the engine.
"That immediacy is exhilarating," he says. Wendschuh points out that while film production is front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations for a few marquee names, games have far fewer gatekeepers. "You don’t need an A‑list star or director to get green‑lit; the barriers to entry are lower, which democratises the medium." Both founders agree that storytelling is the common thread linking their two careers. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games—it came down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera," Dietsch smiles.
"Whether you’re crafting a film or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. The medium changes, but the creative impulse stays the same."