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 ominous image of gigantic, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
One element that didn’t make the final cut 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 simple suggestion by a team member’s child. "His son asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a modular weapon system that let us prototype a new gun in under thirty minutes, so I built one that fires serpents on the fly. The kid went nuts, and we kept it in the game," Dietsch recalls.
This 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 why Wolf Haus’s development philosophy leans heavily on custom tooling and a lean crew. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up the studio’s ambition: "We set out to be disruptors. Everyone told us a twelve‑person team couldn’t deliver a AAA‑level experience, but we knew from indie filmmaking that a small, focused group can punch well above its weight." The founders drew on their experience in low‑budget cinema, where they learned to maximize limited resources, and applied those lessons to game development.
After 80 pitch meetings, they finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took a stake in the studio. The leadership team’s Hollywood pedigree runs 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 founded by Chris Roberts before he turned his attention to Star Citizen.
Abbott’s film résumé also includes a producer credit on Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s experimentation with Unreal Engine. "I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering after watching countless YouTube tutorials," he explains.
Although he had no formal training, he managed to assemble a few modest games before deciding to tackle something more ambitious—a doomsday cult simulator that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept prototype, assuming it would eventually hit a technical wall.
When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter immediately took it to Dooma, a partner who helped refine the vision. Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into game writing in the early 2000s. He founded Sekretagent Productions, contributing narrative work to titles such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, Wendschuh launched several tech ventures, including the cannabis‑formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (about $330 million USD).
After the sale, he bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a chance call from his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into the industry. "I saw the demo Joe had made and it blew my mind, so I came out of retirement," Wendschuh says.
Through Wendschuh’s network, the studio enlisted Reid Schneider—former VP at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, the makers of Journey to the Savage Planet—as a strategic advisor. Schneider recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer.
With this core in place, Wolf Haus turned its attention to funding. The team began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry slowdown. Initial interest was positive, but securing capital proved difficult.
After partnering with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and re‑pitching in 2024, Wolf Haus finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Abbott credits the CAA relationship and the presence of veteran game industry figures for the successful raise. "Our agent Derek Douglas had represented me for twelve years and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris," Wendschuh notes. What truly sets Join Us apart is the scale of the project relative to the team size—just thirteen full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the studio entered development with a clear understanding of scope and a commitment to keeping the team small enough that every voice matters. To make such an expansive title feasible, Wolf Haus invested heavily in internal tools early on.
"Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch explains. "We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive open world without the project collapsing under its own weight. The first year was as much about building those tools as it was about designing gameplay." The equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike allowed Wolf Haus to self‑finance the entire development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing. This model gave the studio the freedom to iterate on tools without external pressure for rapid milestones.
"Our investors want the studio to increase its enterprise value, so they support our tool‑centric ethos," says Wendschuh. "When we encounter a problem we don’t know how to solve, we simply build a tool for it.
It may slow us down in the short term, but it enables a tiny team to deliver a game of this magnitude." Despite the buzz around generative AI in game creation, Wolf Haus deliberately avoids it for creative tasks. "We believe a human touch is essential.
Using AI to generate core content would undermine why we love making games," Dietsch asserts. Wendschuh adds that the studio’s AI subscriptions are limited to administrative functions like calendar management and email drafting. Krafton, which has publicly positioned itself as an "AI‑first" company, actually required assurance that Wolf Haus would not rely on generative AI for artistic production. This stance mirrors that of Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio that publicly rejected AI‑driven development.
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 recorded by professional actors. "Even as a small indie, we felt it was crucial to keep the audio and world design human‑driven," Dietsch says.
Transitioning from film to games offered Dietsch a newfound immediacy. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring countless approvals before a director ever sees a set. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, placed into the engine, and instantly visualized. "That instant feedback loop is exhilarating," he notes.
Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with massive logistical challenges and reliance on a few high‑profile talent to secure financing. While anyone can shoot a low‑budget movie with a backyard camera, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare. Games, however, have far fewer gatekeepers.
"You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to get a game published; the barriers are lower, which makes the odds of success comparatively higher," he explains. Both mediums, though, share a common creative impulse: storytelling and immersion.
Dietsch reflects on his childhood, when a coin toss decided whether he would pursue games or movies. He learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator and later discovered that whether you’re crafting a film or a game, the goal remains the same—to deliver an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience. This philosophy underpins Join Us and drives Wolf Haus’s determination to prove that a small, passionate team can build a large‑scale, high‑quality game without relying on generative AI or massive staffing.