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 charge on pig‑back while brandishing machine guns, and the sequence culminates in a nightmarish vision of Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the edit 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 the team members’ sons asked, ‘What if there was a snake‑shooting gun?’" Dietsch recalls.
"Because we had built a modular gun system, I could prototype it in about thirty minutes. The kid went nuts, and we kept the weapon in the final build." That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game where players can recruit AI followers or friends to join a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a high‑fidelity experience to be produced by a remarkably small crew.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their philosophy: "We set out to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build a AAA‑level title with a dozen people. Most people laughed." The team’s confidence wasn’t unfounded.
All of the founders came from indie‑film backgrounds where they learned to stretch minuscule budgets into ambitious productions. "We’re used to punching well above our weight," Abbott says.
After a marathon of 80 pitches, Wolf Haus finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took a stake in the studio. The Hollywood connections run deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who later co‑founded Wolf Haus and 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 turned his attention to Star Citizen.
Abbott later produced films such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
"I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering with YouTube tutorials," he explains. Though he had never built a commercial game before, he quickly produced a few small prototypes. The concept that kept resurfacing was a doomsday cult simulator that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—a love letter to both his film and gaming passions.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo and showed it to Abbott, who then presented it to Dooma, a partner studio. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had begun his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s, contributing writing to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
In the 2010s he founded several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for C$430 million (≈$330 million USD). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet, in classic Hollywood fashion, a call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into development.
"I looked at the demo and it blew my mind, so I came out of retirement," Wendschuh says. He introduced the project to Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros. Games VP now heading Raccoon Logic, and Schneider recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer.
With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was financing. Pitching began in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn. "People liked what we were showing, but the market was tight," Dietsch notes. The studio enlisted Creative Artists Agency (CAA) to amplify their outreach, eventually closing a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton in early 2024.
Wendschuh credits the CAA relationship and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for smoothing the path. "My long‑time agent Derek Douglas, who also heads the video‑game division at William Morris, was instrumental," he adds.
What truly sets Join Us apart is the scale of the undertaking relative to the team size—just 13 full‑time staff members. From day one, the studio emphasized a collaborative environment where every voice mattered and each person could influence the creative direction. To keep the project manageable, they invested heavily in custom tooling. "Any system we build must be scalable and debuggable by a single developer," Dietsch explains.
"The first year was spent simultaneously designing gameplay and engineering the tools that would allow that gameplay to scale across an open world without collapsing under its own weight." The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect those tools. Krafton and Lifelike’s capital was used to self‑fund development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing.
"Our investors are aligned with us to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they support our tool‑heavy approach," says Wendschuh. "When we hit a technical roadblock, we simply build a bespoke tool to solve it. It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a small team to deliver a game of this magnitude." In an era where many studios tout generative‑AI pipelines, Wolf Haus deliberately eschews the technology for core creative work. "We don’t use generative AI for any artistic decisions," Dietsch states plainly.
"Our motivation is the human touch. If an algorithm did the heavy lifting, it would defeat the reason we get up every morning." Wendschuh adds a practical nuance: "We have a few AI subscriptions for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, but nothing that influences design, art, or writing." Even Krafton, which recently rebranded itself as an "AI‑first" company, insisted that Wolf Haus avoid AI in the creative pipeline. This mirrors a broader stance taken by other Krafton‑owned studios, such as Neon Giant, which publicly declared its independence from the parent’s AI initiatives.
The team’s commitment to handcrafted content is evident in the game’s six‑kilometre‑square map, which was built entirely by hand, and the 15,000 voice lines, all recorded by human actors. "For a small indie title, preserving that level of human craftsmanship was non‑negotiable," Dietsch affirms.
Transitioning from film to games also gave Dietsch a fresh sense of immediacy. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize: "You write a script, wait for financing, then spend years shooting and post‑producing," he says. By contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, inserted into the engine, and instantly visualized.
That rapid feedback loop fuels the studio’s iterative process. Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, often requiring high‑profile talent to secure studio backing. "Anyone can shoot a backyard movie, but without big names or distribution, success is rare," he notes. Games, however, have a lower barrier to entry and fewer gatekeepers, making it easier for small teams to achieve commercial impact without celebrity endorsement.
Both mediums, though, share a common creative impulse: storytelling and immersive experience. "When I was six, I wanted to make movies or games, and it came down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera," Dietsch reminisces. "Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re delivering a story, an experience, and that core desire hasn’t changed."