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, unleash a barrage of machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with an image of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
One element that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous "snake gun," a weapon that, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—originated from a simple suggestion by a team member’s child. "His son asked, ‘What if there was a gun that shot snakes?’ We had a modular weapon system that let us prototype a new gun in about thirty minutes. I built it on the fly, and the kid went nuts.
It stayed in the game," Dietsch recalls, highlighting the spontaneous, experimental spirit that defines Join Us. The game itself is an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to build and manage a 1970s‑style cult. The chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay is a direct reflection of the studio’s tech‑first philosophy, which has enabled a high‑fidelity title to be produced by a remarkably small team.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We set out to be disruptors. Everyone told us a twelve‑person team couldn’t deliver a game of this scope. We proved them wrong." Their confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where they learned to achieve big results on shoestring budgets. After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus.
The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs 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 veteran 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 films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
Join Us began as a side project for Dietsch while he was tinkering with Unreal Engine. "Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt blocked by the cost and complexity of creating something myself.
I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," he explains. Though he had no formal training, Dietsch eventually crafted a small demo that captured his fascination with a doomsday cult theme—a blend of survival mechanics and grindhouse cinema that merged his film and gaming passions into a single intellectual property. He presented the proof‑of‑concept to Abbott, who then introduced it to Dooma Wendschuh, the studio’s CFO and narrative director.
Wendschuh’s résumé reads like a Hollywood résumé: he began as a producer and screenwriter, later providing narrative services for titles such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins through his company Sekretagent Productions. In the 2010s he founded several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million).
After cashing out, he bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, planning a quiet retirement. That plan was interrupted when his old roommate Michael Abbott called, saying a friend had made a video game. Wendschuh watched Dietsch’s demo, was blown away, and decided to come out of retirement. He brought in Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros.
Games VP now heading Raccoon Logic, as a strategic advisor, and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer. With a core team taking shape, the next hurdle was financing—particularly challenging during the industry downturn of 2023‑2024. After initial outreach and partnering with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles, Wolf Haus resumed pitching in 2024 and eventually closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton.
Wendschuh credits the CAA connection and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors that might otherwise have remained shut. Despite the high‑profile backing, Wolf Haus remains a boutique operation of just thirteen full‑time staff.
Dietsch emphasizes that this lean structure is intentional: "We wanted every team member to have a voice, to touch the creative, and to feel ownership of the final product." To make such an ambitious open‑world title feasible with a tiny crew, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from day one. "Any system we build must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch notes.
The first year of development was split between designing gameplay concepts and constructing the internal tools that would later allow those concepts to flourish across a six‑kilometre‑square map. The funding model further supports this tool‑centric approach. Both Krafton and Lifelike hold equity stakes and have provided capital that effectively self‑finances the project.
"We’re using their investment to cover development costs, and only now are we looking at modest project‑finance for marketing," says Wendschuh. This equity‑driven partnership aligns the investors’ interest in the studio’s long‑term value with Wolf Haus’s philosophy of building reusable tools for every challenge they encounter. While this can slow immediate progress, it enables the small team to tackle problems that larger studios might outsource to third‑party solutions. When asked about generative AI, the team’s stance is unequivocal: they do not employ it for any creative tasks.
"We believe a game should retain a human touch. Using AI to generate assets would undermine the very reason we get up each morning," Dietsch says. Wendschuh adds that the only AI tools they use are mundane productivity aids like calendar scheduling and email drafting.
Interestingly, Krafton—publicly branding itself as an "AI‑first" company—explicitly required that Wolf Haus refrain from using generative AI in the game's creation, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the world itself. The six‑kilometre‑square environment of Join Us was built by hand, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, a point the team stresses as a badge of pride for an indie studio. Dietsch reflects on the contrast between film and game development, noting the immediacy of the latter.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, subject to layers of approval and scheduling. In games, a concept can be prototyped in a single morning, placed into the engine, and instantly tested. This rapid iteration fuels the studio’s creative energy. Wendschuh observes that traditional film production is front‑loaded with high‑stakes negotiations for a few marquee names, whereas games face far fewer gatekeepers.
"Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without star power or distribution, success is unlikely. In gaming, the barriers are lower; you don’t need an A‑list actor or director to reach an audience," he explains. Both founders agree that the core impulse behind their work—whether on a set or in a virtual world—is storytelling and experience design.
Dietsch recalls his childhood fascination with both mediums, programming on a TI‑83 calculator and dreaming of making movies. He concludes that the medium may change, but the goal remains the same: to craft an engaging narrative that resonates with players or viewers.