The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulation where robed followers zip around on pigs, wield machine guns, and eventually confront massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the cut was the infamous snake‑gun, a quirky weapon that Joe Dietsch, the chief executive officer and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, says was born from a child’s off‑hand suggestion. "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 gun design in minutes, so I whipped up a snake‑shooting weapon in about half an hour.
The kid went nuts, and we kept it in the final build," Dietsch recalls. This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival title that lets players recruit followers—or fellow players in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a high‑fidelity experience to be assembled by a surprisingly small crew.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build a AAA‑level game with a dozen people.
Most people thought we were crazy." The team’s confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where doing more with less is the norm. "We come from indie film circles and are used to punching far above our weight," Abbott says. After 80 pitch meetings, Wolf Haus finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the studio.
The founders’ 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, a production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before he turned his focus 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. "Unreal Engine was free to download, and I’d always loved games, but there seemed to be a massive barrier to actually creating something. I started learning from YouTube tutorials and built a few tiny prototypes," he explains.
Despite lacking formal game‑dev experience, Dietsch produced a couple of modest games before deciding to tackle something larger—a doomsday cult simulator that fused survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and the latter took it to Dooma, a partner that helped shape the project’s direction.
Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s chief financial officer and narrative director, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s. He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, he launched several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million).
After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, planning a quiet retirement. Yet a sudden call from his old Hollywood Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back. "I watched the demo Joe sent me and it blew my mind. I came out of retirement to help," Wendschuh says.
He then introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic, who joined as a strategic advisor and recruited Ubisoft Montreal veteran Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand as chief technology officer. Funding proved challenging amid an industry downturn that began in 2023.
The team’s first pitches were met with polite interest but little cash. After signing with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) in Los Angeles and regrouping, they resumed pitching in 2024 and finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits the CAA connection—alongside seasoned advisors like Schneider and Chartrand—and the reputation of their agents for opening doors that might otherwise have stayed closed.
Despite the high‑profile backing, Join Us is being built by just 13 full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team culture is intentional: "We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative process, and to feel ownership over the final product." To make such an ambitious open‑world game feasible, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling from day one. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person.
We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive map without the project collapsing under its own weight," Dietsch explains. The first year of development was therefore split between ideating gameplay and engineering the tools that would make that gameplay possible, a strategy that also lays groundwork for future projects. The equity financing model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s investment has been used to self‑fund the game.
We’re only now adding a modest amount of project finance for marketing," says Wendschuh. Because the investors’ returns are tied to the studio’s enterprise value, they encourage the team to build reusable tools rather than rely on shortcuts.
"Whenever we hit a problem we don’t know how to solve, we build a tool. It may slow us down short‑term but it enables us to achieve AAA quality with a tiny crew," he adds. When asked about generative AI, a hot topic in game development, Dietsch gives a clear answer: the studio does not use it for creative work. "We believe a human touch is essential.
Turning development over to an AI would defeat the reason we get up every morning," he says. Wendschuh concedes that the team uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, but not for any artistic or design decisions. Interestingly, Krafton—publicly branding itself as an "AI‑first" company—insisted that Wolf Haus refrain from using generative AI in the creative pipeline, mirroring similar statements from Krafton‑owned Neon Giant.
Both studios want to avoid the perception that AI could replace voice actors, artists, or other creative talent. Indeed, Join Us’s six‑kilometre‑square map is entirely handcrafted, and its 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors.
Dietsch stresses that preserving that handcrafted feel was a priority, even for an indie‑scale project. Dietsch also reflects on the differences between filmmaking and game development. In film, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and a massive budget before the director ever sees the final product. In games, an idea can be prototyped within hours, placed into the engine, and instantly visualized.
This immediacy, he says, fuels his enthusiasm: "You can have an idea this morning, put it in the engine, see it in action, and iterate on the spot." Wendschuh notes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense, high‑stakes set work and a reliance on a handful of high‑profile talent to secure financing. While anyone can technically shoot a movie with a backyard camera, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare.
By contrast, the barriers to entry for games are lower, making it easier for small teams to achieve commercial success without A‑list names. Both founders agree that the core creative drive—telling stories and delivering experiences—remains the same across mediums. "When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games.
It came down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas. I learned to program on a TI‑83, so I’ve always been straddling both worlds," Dietsch reflects. "Whether it’s a film or a game, you’re creating an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. The medium changes, but the purpose stays constant."