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 clip, robed cultists zip around on pig‑back, brandishing machine guns, before the screen erupts into an image of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What 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. "One of our team member’s kids asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting 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 went nuts, and the weapon stayed in the game," Dietsch recalls. This anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult empire. The game’s wild design is matched by the studio’s equally unconventional development philosophy.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, says the team set out to be "disruptors" from day one. "We told everyone we could pull off a AAA‑level experience with just a dozen developers. Most people laughed and said it was impossible," he explains. Their confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on shoestring budgets in the indie film world.
"We grew up making indie movies, constantly punching above our weight," Abbott adds. After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving the project the financial backing it needed while allowing the founders to retain creative control. Wolf Haus’s leadership is steeped in Hollywood pedigree. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who now co‑founders the studio.
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, a production company founded by Chris Roberts before he moved on to the Star Citizen universe. Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. The genesis of Join Us can be traced back to Dietsch tinkering with Unreal Engine after discovering it was free to download.
"I’d been a gamer my whole life, but creating something felt like a huge barrier. I started watching YouTube tutorials and experimenting on my own," he says. Despite having no formal training, he managed to ship a few small prototypes before committing to a larger vision: a doomsday‑cult simulator that blends survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo and showed it to Abbott, who then presented it to Dooma, a production partner.
The demo caught the eye of Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, a former film producer and screenwriter who transitioned to games in the early 2000s. Wendschuh’s résumé includes writing credits on Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins, as well as founding the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which later sold for C$430 million. After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, a call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the industry.
"I watched the demo and it blew my mind. That’s what got me out of retirement," Wendschuh recounts.
He then introduced Reid Schneider—formerly a vice‑president at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic—to act 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 team began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by an industry downturn.
"People liked what we were doing, but the market was tough," says Dietsch. After initial outreach, they enlisted Creative Artists Agency (CAA) as representation and returned to the pitch circuit in 2024. Their persistence paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed a seed round, providing the capital needed to continue development.
Wendschuh credits CAA’s connections—especially with titles like 007: First Light—and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for smoothing the path to investment. What truly sets Join Us apart is the scale of the project relative to the size of the team. With only 13 full‑time staff members, Wolf Haus deliberately kept the group small to ensure every voice could be heard and every employee could touch the creative core of the game. "We wanted a studio where everyone contributes directly to the final product," says Dietsch.
To make such an ambitious open‑world title feasible, the team invested heavily in custom tooling early on. "Every system we build must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay features and constructing the internal toolset that would allow those features to scale across a six‑kilometre‑square map without the project collapsing under its own weight. The equity‑funded model gave Wolf Haus the breathing room to perfect these tools.
"Krafton and Lifelike’s investment is essentially self‑funding for the game," notes Wendschuh. "We’re now only taking on a modest amount of project finance for marketing, but the core development has been covered by our equity partners." This arrangement aligns the investors’ interests with the studio’s long‑term value, encouraging them to support the extensive tool‑building ethos.
"Whenever we hit a problem we don’t know how to solve, we build a tool for it. It may slow us down short‑term, but it lets a tiny team deliver a AAA‑grade experience," Wendschuh adds. In an era where many studios tout generative‑AI shortcuts, Wolf Haus has taken a clear stance against using AI for creative work. "We don’t employ generative AI in any part of the game’s creation," says Dietsch.
"The human touch is essential; handing the process over to an algorithm would defeat why we love making games." Wendschuh concedes that the team uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, but stresses that no AI tools influence art, design, or narrative. Interestingly, Krafton—an “AI‑first” company—explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar position taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant.
The studio’s commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s massive 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, not synthetic voices. "That was non‑negotiable for us," Dietsch emphasizes. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between film and game production.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring countless approvals and the involvement of high‑profile talent before a studio greenlights it. By contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single day, inserted into the engine, and instantly visualised. "You can have an idea this morning, code it by lunch, and see it play out in real time," he says.
Wendschuh notes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, high‑budget set work before any shooting begins, whereas games have fewer gatekeepers and can succeed without A‑list actors or directors. Both founders agree that the core impulse behind both mediums is storytelling and creating immersive experiences.
"When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games; it came down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas," Dietsch laughs. He learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator, a skill that later informed his game‑making. "Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re delivering a story, an experience, and an emotional journey. The tools change, but the goal stays the same."