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 zip around on pigs, brandishing machine guns, before the scene culminates in a monstrous, Cthulhu‑like mass of tentacles.
One detail that didn’t make the final edit was the infamous "snake gun," a quirky weapon that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a child’s imagination. "My team member’s son asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool for weapons, so within half an hour I built it. His reaction was pure amazement, and we kept it in the game," Dietsch recalls. This anecdote captures the chaotic, experimental spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to a retro‑70s‑style cult.
It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has allowed a tiny crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors. Everyone told us you needed a hundred people to pull this off; we said twelve would be enough." Their confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where small budgets often demand creative resourcefulness.
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 Mel Gibson—and the two later co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie features Happy Hunting and Manifest West.
Abbott is the son of renowned makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company founded by Chris Roberts before his shift to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies 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 always loved games, but the barrier to actually building something felt huge. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and made a few tiny prototypes," he explains. Though he lacked formal training, Dietsch quickly produced small games and eventually settled on the concept of a doomsday cult simulator—a mash‑up of survival mechanics and grindhouse cinema that merged his passions for film and gaming into a single intellectual property.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming it would hit a technical wall at some point. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a partner who helped refine the vision. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before transitioning to games in the early 2000s, providing writing for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, he founded several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million.
After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet, in true Hollywood fashion, an unexpected call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into development. "I watched the demo Joe sent me and was blown away. It convinced me to come out of retirement," Wendschuh says.
He then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games VP now heading Raccoon Logic, who became a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer.
With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was funding—particularly challenging during the industry downturn of 2023‑24. After initial outreach, Wolf Haus signed with CAA in Los Angeles and resumed pitching in 2024, eventually closing a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh believes the CAA connection, along with veteran advisors like Schneider and Chartrand, was crucial. "My longtime agent Derek Douglas, who now handles our CAA representation, also led the video‑game department at William Morris," he notes.
Despite the high‑profile backing, Join Us remains a lean operation with just 13 full‑time staff. The studio’s mantra is to keep everyone’s voice heard and ensure each team member touches the creative process.
To make such an ambitious open‑world possible, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tools early on. "Every system must be scalable and debuggable by a single person. We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive map without the project collapsing," Dietsch explains. The first year of development was therefore split between ideation and tool creation, a strategy that also prepares the studio for future projects.
Funding from Krafton and Lifelike has allowed the team to self‑finance the game, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing. Because the investors hold equity, they are incentivized to support the studio’s tool‑centric ethos. "Whenever we hit a problem we don’t know how to solve, we simply build a tool.
It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a small team to deliver a game of this scope," says Wendschuh. When asked about generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not rely on it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate core content would defeat why we love making games," Dietsch says.
Wendschuh adds that the studio only uses AI for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton—positioned as an "AI‑first" company—explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio.
The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map is entirely hand‑built, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices. "Even as a tiny indie, preserving that human element was non‑negotiable," Wendschuh emphasizes. Dietsch also highlights a key advantage of game development over film: immediacy.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring studio approval, casting, and lengthy production schedules. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, allowing developers to see and iterate on their vision instantly. This rapid feedback loop, he argues, democratizes creation, reducing reliance on A‑list talent and gatekeepers.
Both mediums, however, share a common creative impulse: storytelling and immersive experience. "Whether you’re making a movie or a game, you’re trying to give someone an experience, tell a story, and engage them," Dietsch reflects. His childhood fascination with both cameras and calculators set the stage for a career that now bridges Hollywood and interactive entertainment, proving that a small, passionate team can indeed disrupt the industry without leaning on generative AI.