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 followers zip around on pig‑back, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with an image of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
What viewers didn’t see 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 off‑hand suggestion. “One of the team members’ son asked, “What would a snake gun look like?” We had a rapid‑scaling tool for weapons, so within about thirty minutes I built a gun that actually shoots snakes. The kid was blown away, and the weapon stayed in the final build,” Dietsch recalls.
That anecdote captures the chaotic, sandbox‑style gameplay that Join Us promises. Players can wander an open‑world environment, recruit followers or invite friends into co‑op mode, and lead a 1970s‑inspired cult through a blend of survival mechanics and over‑the‑top antics. The game’s design philosophy also reflects Wolf Haus’s tech‑first mindset, which has allowed a relatively tiny crew to produce a high‑fidelity experience.
Michael Abbott, the studio’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: “We wanted to be disruptors. Everyone told us you needed a hundred‑person team to pull off something of this scope. We proved them wrong with just twelve core developers.” Their confidence stems from a history of punching above their weight in indie film, where small budgets often demand creative ingenuity. After roughly eighty pitches, Wolf Haus finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital.
Both investors took a stake in the studio, providing the capital needed to move from prototype to full production. The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who now serves as a co‑founder. 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 house originally founded by Chris Roberts before his shift to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
Join Us began as a side project for Dietsch while he was experimenting with Unreal Engine. “Unreal was free to download, and I had been a gamer for as long as I could remember, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny games as practice,” he explains.
The idea of a doomsday cult simulator kept resurfacing because it merged his love of grindhouse cinema with survival‑game mechanics, creating a unique intellectual property that straddles both mediums. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming he would eventually hit a technical wall. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter took it to Dooma, a production partner that helped shape the concept further. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director, entered the gaming world after a career in film production and screenwriting.
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, including the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote restaurant on a tiny Canadian island, planning a quiet retirement.
A sudden call from his old Hollywood‑hills roommate, Michael Abbott, lured him back: “Joe showed me a video of his game and it blew my mind. I came out of retirement to help.” Through Wendschuh, the studio recruited Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games vice president now heading Raccoon Logic, as a strategic advisor, and hired Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With this core team in place, the next hurdle was funding—an especially tough task during the industry downturn of 2023‑2024.
The studio partnered with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) for representation, leveraging the agency’s connections to secure seed financing from Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh notes that CAA’s track record, including representing titles like 007: First Light, and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand, were instrumental in winning investor confidence.
Despite the high ambitions, Wolf Haus operates with only thirteen full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that a small‑team culture ensures every voice is heard and each person can influence the creative direction. To make such a large‑scale project feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early on.
“If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single developer. We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across an open world without the project collapsing under its own weight,” he says. The first year of development was therefore split between ideating gameplay and constructing the underlying tools that would sustain future growth.
Funding from Krafton and Lifelike has been primarily equity‑based, allowing the studio to self‑finance the core development while allocating a modest amount of project finance for marketing later on. This structure aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the continued development of in‑house tools even if they temporarily slow progress. When asked about the role of generative AI, Dietsch gives a clear answer: the studio does not rely on it for creative work.
“We believe a human touch is essential. Using AI to generate assets would defeat the purpose of why we love making games.” Wendschuh adds that the team only uses AI for administrative tasks like calendar management and email drafting, not for any artistic or design decisions. Interestingly, Krafton—publicly positioning itself as an “AI‑first” company—insisted that Wolf Haus 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 was built entirely by hand, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, a point the team considers vital even for an indie title. Dietsch reflects on the contrast between film and games: “In film you may spend years developing a script, securing talent, and waiting for greenlight. With games, you can prototype an idea in the morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly.
That immediacy is exhilarating.” Wendschuh agrees, noting that film production is front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations for a few marquee names, whereas games face fewer gatekeepers, allowing smaller teams to achieve success without A‑list talent. Both mediums, however, share a common creative drive: storytelling and immersive experience. Dietsch recalls his childhood ambition to make either movies or games, a decision that ultimately hinged on a coin toss and a Christmas camera.
Today, his career illustrates that regardless of the platform, the goal remains the same—crafting experiences that captivate audiences.