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 preview, robed followers rode on pigs, wielded machine guns, and the climax featured monstrous, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What the audience didn’t see was the infamous "snake gun," a quirky weapon that has become a hallmark of the game.
According to Joe Dietsch, CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, the idea originated from a simple conversation with a team member’s child. "His son asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool, so within half an hour I built a gun that actually fires snakes. It blew his mind and it stayed in the final build," Dietsch recalls.
That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us. The title is an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult. The game’s design philosophy leans heavily on technology, allowing a small, highly skilled team to produce a visually rich, high‑fidelity title without the massive staff typical of AAA projects. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We set out to be disruptors.
Everyone told us a twelve‑person studio couldn’t build a world of this scope, but we knew from indie filmmaking that we could punch well above our weight." The Wolf Haus founders bring a deep Hollywood pedigree to the table. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who later co‑founded the studio.
Together they co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie features Happy Hunting and Manifest West. Abbott, the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott, helped launch Ascendant Pictures—Chris Roberts’s film production venture before he turned his attention to Star Citizen—and later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx. This blend of cinematic experience and entrepreneurial grit proved vital when the team embarked on a grueling 80‑pitch marathon that eventually secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital.
The genesis of Join Us can be traced back to Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d been a gamer forever, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," he explains.
Those modest beginnings evolved into a full‑blown proof of concept centered on a doomsday cult simulator—a concept that fused his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. When he presented the demo to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and introduced it to Dooma, the studio that would later become a strategic partner.
A key figure in the studio’s evolution is Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director. Wendschuh began his career as a producer and screenwriter in Hollywood before transitioning to games in the early 2000s, founding Sekretagent Productions, which supplied narrative work for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
In the 2010s he launched several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, a chance call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the industry. "I watched Joe’s demo and it completely blew my mind. It convinced me to come out of retirement," Wendschuh says.
With Wendschuh on board, the studio recruited Reid Schneider—formerly a vice‑president at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, the creators of Journey to the Savage Planet—as a strategic advisor. Schneider then brought in Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer.
Together they solidified a leadership team that combined narrative expertise, production know‑how, and deep technical chops. Funding, however, proved to be a steep hill. The studio began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn. Initial reactions were positive—"people thought the game was cool"—but securing capital was difficult.
After partnering with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles, the team intensified its outreach and eventually closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton in 2024. Wendschuh credits CAA’s representation and the involvement of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors that might otherwise have remained closed.
What truly sets Join Us apart is the way it is being built: a core team of just thirteen full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team model is intentional, fostering an environment where every voice matters and each employee can directly influence the creative direction. To make such an ambitious project feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset. "Any system in the game has to be scalable and debuggable by a single person.
We built a robust toolkit early so that when features proliferate across a massive open world, the project doesn’t implode," Dietsch explains. This tool‑first approach consumed a large portion of the first development year, but it also laid the groundwork for future titles.
The equity partnership with Kraftor and Lifelike allowed Wolf Haus to self‑fund the development, using the investors’ capital to cover production costs while keeping the studio financially independent. "Our investors are motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they support our tool‑building ethos," says Wendschuh.
This model also means the studio can allocate resources to marketing later without jeopardizing the core development pipeline. In an era where many studios tout generative AI as a shortcut, Wolf Haus deliberately avoids it for creative work.
"We don’t use generative AI in the game’s design. The human touch is essential to us," Dietsch states. Wendschuh adds that the team only employs AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Krafton, despite branding itself as an "AI‑first" company, also insisted that Wolf Haus refrain from using generative AI in the creative process, aligning with the studio’s philosophy that AI could threaten jobs for voice actors and artists.
Indeed, the six‑kilometre‑square map of Join Us is handcrafted, and the game features roughly 15,000 voice lines recorded by human performers—a commitment that underscores the studio’s dedication to authenticity. Dietsch highlights the immediacy of game development compared with film: "In movies, an idea can take years to materialise; in games, you can prototype a concept in a morning, see it in the engine, and iterate instantly.
That speed is intoxicating." Wendschuh points out that film production is heavily front‑loaded, requiring the attachment of high‑profile talent before a project can secure financing. While anyone can technically shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare.
By contrast, the video‑game market has fewer gatekeepers, allowing small teams to reach audiences directly. "You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to make a successful game," he notes. Both founders agree that the core creative impulse—telling stories and delivering experiences—remains the same across mediums. Dietsch reflects on his childhood fascination with both movies and games, recalling that a simple Christmas camera sparked his love for visual storytelling, while programming on a TI‑83 calculator introduced him to interactivity.
"Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re crafting an experience, a narrative, and an emotional connection. The tools change, but the goal stays the same," he concludes.