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 pigs, unleash machine‑gun fire, and the sequence culminates with a monstrous, Cthulhu‑like mass of tentacles. What viewers didn’t see was the absurdly creative "snake gun," a weapon that actually fires serpents.
According to Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, the idea sprang from a child’s imagination. "One of our team member’s son asked, ‘What would a snake gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us scale a weapon in minutes, so I built a snake‑shooting gun in about half an hour. The kid was thrilled, and we kept it in the final build," Dietsch recalls.
This anecdote captures the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to join a 1970s‑style cult and wreak havoc across a sprawling map. The game’s development story is equally unconventional. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, describes the studio’s ambition as deliberately disruptive. "We told everyone, ‘We don’t need a hundred‑person team; twelve will do.’ Most people laughed, saying it was impossible.
But we’ve spent our careers punching far above our weight, so we knew we could make it happen," he says. Their confidence stems from a background in low‑budget indie filmmaking, where small crews routinely produce high‑impact content. The Wolf Haus team pitched the concept a staggering 80 times before securing equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold stakes in the studio. The founders’ Hollywood pedigree runs deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, the 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 house founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to the Star Citizen universe.
Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
"Unreal Engine was free to download, and I’d always loved games, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," he explains. Despite having no formal training, Dietsch managed to release two small games before deciding to tackle something bigger—a doomsday cult simulator that fused his love of survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept, hit what he expected to be a technical wall, and then showed the demo to Abbott, who took it to Dooma for further development.
Dooma Wendschuh, the studio’s CFO and narrative director, brings a hybrid film‑and‑gaming résumé. He began as a producer and screenwriter in Hollywood before founding Sekretagent Productions, a writing house that contributed narrative work to titles such as 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 C$430 million (about $330 million USD).
After the sale, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a sudden call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back into the industry.
After reviewing a demo of Join Us, he was convinced and re‑entered development. Through his network, Wendschuh connected the studio with Reid Schneider, former vice‑president at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, the creators of Journey to the Savage Planet. Schneider joined as a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as chief technology officer. With this core team in place, the next hurdle was funding—a daunting task during the industry downturn of 2023‑24. Initial outreach yielded interest but no commitments.
After signing with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles and re‑pitching in 2024, Wolf Haus finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. The partnership with CAA proved pivotal. "Our agent Derek Douglas had represented me for twelve years in games and previously headed the video‑game department at William Morris," says Wendschuh. This connection, combined with the credibility of veteran advisors like Schneider and Chartrand, helped convince investors to back a studio with only 13 full‑time staff members.
Maintaining a tiny crew while aiming for a large‑scale, high‑fidelity title required a tool‑first philosophy. "If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch notes. The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and building the internal toolset that would allow those ideas to scale across an open‑world map without collapsing under technical debt. This approach also aligned with the equity‑funded model: Krafton and Lifelike provided capital that was used directly to finance development, allowing the team to self‑fund the project while reserving a small portion of financing for marketing later on.
One of the studio’s most public stances is its refusal to rely on generative AI for creative work. When asked, Dietsch gave a concise answer: "We don’t use generative AI because we believe a game needs a human touch.
Turning development over to an AI would defeat the reason we get up every morning." Wendschuh adds that the only AI tools they employ are mundane productivity aids—calendar scheduling and email drafting—not any content‑creation functions. Interestingly, Krafton, which has branded itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required that Wolf Haus avoid AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio. The commitment to hand‑crafted 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, not synthetic voices. This dedication to artisanal production reflects the studio’s broader philosophy: even as a small indie, they aim to deliver a polished, immersive experience without sacrificing craftsmanship. Dietsch contrasts the immediacy of game development with the lengthy gestation periods of film.
In cinema, an idea can take years to secure funding, attach A‑list talent, and finally reach the set. By contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, tested in the engine, and iterated upon instantly. "You can see the result the same day, which is exhilarating," he says.
Wendschuh notes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, requiring high‑profile directors or actors to green‑light a project, whereas games face fewer gatekeepers. "You don’t need an A‑list star to make a successful game," he observes, highlighting the democratizing potential of interactive media.
Both founders agree that the core creative impulse—telling a story and delivering an experience—remains the same across mediums. Dietsch recalls that as a child he wanted to make either movies or games, and a coin toss decided his path. He taught himself programming on a TI‑83 calculator, blending his love of technology with narrative ambition. Today, Wolf Haus’s journey illustrates how a small, tightly knit team with Hollywood savvy, tech expertise, and a willingness to defy industry norms can produce a bold, large‑scale title without leaning on generative AI, proving that passion and ingenuity can still outsize big budgets.