The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulation where robed followers ride pigs, unleash machine guns, and conclude with a vision of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the cut was the infamous snake‑gun, a quirky weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was inspired by 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, so within half an hour 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 game where players can recruit NPC followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a high‑fidelity, large‑scale title to emerge from a remarkably small development team.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, sums up their ambition: "We set out to be disruptors. Everyone told us a twelve‑person team couldn’t produce a AAA‑level game. We proved them wrong." Their confidence stems from a background in low‑budget indie filmmaking, where they learned to punch far above their weight.
After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus. The founders’ Hollywood credentials run deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of actor 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 experimentation with Unreal Engine. "I discovered that Unreal was free to download and started learning from YouTube tutorials," he explains. Though he had never built a commercial game before, he quickly put together a few small prototypes and eventually settled on a doomsday‑cult simulation—a concept that merged his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and the pair took the prototype to Dooma for further development.
Dooma Wendschuh, the studio’s chief financial officer and narrative director, entered the gaming world after a career as a film producer and screenwriter. 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, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million (approximately $330 million USD). After that windfall, he bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a call from his former Hollywood‑hillroommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into the industry. "I watched the demo Joe had made, and it blew my mind.
It was the spark that got me out of retirement," Wendschuh says. He then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros.
Games executive now heading Raccoon Logic, who became a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. Funding proved to be the next hurdle. The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by an industry downturn.
Despite positive reactions to the concept, securing capital was difficult. The team eventually enlisted the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) as representation, re‑approached investors in 2024, and closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh notes that CAA’s clout—having represented titles like 007: First Light—combined with the credibility of veterans like Schneider and Chartrand, was instrumental in closing the deal.
What truly sets Join Us apart is how it is being built: a core team of just thirteen full‑time staff. "We entered the project with a clear understanding of the scope and deliberately kept the team small so everyone could have a voice and directly shape the creative direction," says Dietsch. To make such an ambitious open‑world game feasible with a lean crew, Wolf Haus invested heavily in internal tool development from the outset.
"Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person. We built a robust toolkit early so that when features proliferate across a massive map, the project doesn’t collapse under its own weight," Dietsch explains. This tooling philosophy not only accelerated Join Us but also laid the groundwork for future titles.
The equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike allowed the studio to self‑fund development, with only a modest portion of later project finance earmarked for marketing. "Our investors are motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they support our tool‑building ethos," Wendschuh adds.
"Whenever we encounter a problem we don’t know how to solve, we simply create a tool to address it. It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a tiny team to deliver a game of this scale." When asked about the role of generative AI, Dietsch is unequivocal: the studio does not employ it for any creative tasks.
"We believe a human touch is essential. Turning development over to an AI would defeat the purpose of why we get up each morning," he says. Wendschuh concedes that the team uses AI for mundane administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting, but none of it influences design, art, or narrative. Interestingly, Krafton—publicly positioning itself as an "AI‑first" company—specifically required that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, echoing similar stances from other Krafton‑owned studios such as Neon Giant.
Both Wendschuh and Dietsch stress the importance of preserving jobs for voice actors, artists, and other creatives. The six‑kilometre‑square world of Join Us is handcrafted, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human talent, a point the team considers non‑negotiable despite their indie status. Dietsch reflects on the contrast between filmmaking and game development. In film, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and studio green‑lights.
In games, an inspiration can be prototyped the same day and instantly visualised in the engine. "You can have an idea at breakfast and see it in the engine by lunch.
That immediacy is exhilarating," he says. Wendschuh adds that movies are heavily front‑loaded with high‑profile talent needed to secure financing, whereas games have far fewer gatekeepers. "You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to get a game funded; the barriers to entry are lower, which makes the odds of success higher for small teams." Ultimately, both founders trace their creative drive back to childhood. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games.
It came down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera," Dietsch laughs. He learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator, a skill that later merged with his cinematic passions. "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 core intent remains the same."