You may recall seeing the trailer for Join Us during the Xbox Showcase in June. The clip introduced a darkly humorous cooperative cult simulator where robed followers zip around on pigs, wield machine guns, and conclude with a shot of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the edit, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—was the absurd “snake gun.” "One of the team members’ kids came up with the idea and asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We have a rapid‑prototyping tool, so within about thirty minutes I built a weapon that fires snakes.
The kid was thrilled, and the gun stayed in the final build," Dietsch recounts. That anecdote captures the chaotic, sandbox‑style gameplay Join Us promises: an open‑world survival experience where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op—to join a 1970s‑inspired cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a small team to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a far larger staff. “We set out to be disruptors,” says Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer.
"We told ourselves, ‘We don’t need a hundred‑person studio; twelve people can handle this.’ Everyone else called us naive. But we’ve proven that indie‑film crews can punch well above their weight, and we brought that mentality to games," Abbott explains. After 80 pitches, the studio finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which now hold 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 started by Chris Roberts before his shift to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies 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. The barrier to actually building something felt huge, so I started watching YouTube tutorials and experimenting," he says. Though he had no formal game‑dev background, he managed to create a few small prototypes before committing to a larger vision.
The core concept—a doomsday cult simulator that blends survival mechanics with grindhouse‑cinema aesthetics—kept pulling him back. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, expecting to hit a technical wall soon.
When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and took it to Dooma, the studio that would later become Wolf Haus. Dooma Wendschuh, the studio’s CFO and narrative director, entered the picture after a varied career that spanned film production, screenwriting, and video‑game writing.
He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing narrative work for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, he launched several tech ventures, including the cannabis formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million).
After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire. Yet a call from his old Hollywood‑hillroommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back.
"Joe sent me a video of his game, and it blew my mind. I came out of retirement to help," Wendschuh says.
He introduced the project to Reid Schneider, former Warner Bros. Games VP and now head of Raccoon Logic, who became a strategic advisor and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as CTO. With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was funding—particularly difficult during the industry downturn of 2023‑24.
After initial outreach, Wolf Haus partnered with CAA in Los Angeles, re‑pitching throughout 2024 until Lifelike Capital and Krafton provided a seed round. Wendschuh notes that CAA’s representation, which also covers titles like 007: First Light, and the presence of seasoned veterans like Schneider and Chartrand, were decisive.
Despite the high ambitions, the studio remains lean: only 13 full‑time staff members. "We entered the project knowing exactly what we wanted to achieve, but we also wanted a small‑team culture where everyone’s voice matters and everyone can touch the creative process," Dietsch explains.
To make a massive open‑world game feasible with such a compact crew, Wolf Haus invested heavily in internal 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 six‑kilometre‑square map without the project collapsing under its own weight," says Dietsch. The first year of development was therefore split between ideating gameplay and constructing the tools that would later enable rapid iteration. The equity financing model gave the studio the breathing room to perfect those tools. "Krafton and Lifelike’s investment funds the game directly, so the development is essentially self‑funded.
We’re now adding a small amount of project finance for marketing, but the core build was covered by our equity partners," Wendschuh clarifies. This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term value creation, encouraging the team to keep building reusable tools even if it slows short‑term progress.
When asked about generative AI, the answer is a firm no. "We deliberately avoid AI for creative work. Game development is a craft we love, and handing it over to an algorithm would defeat the purpose of why we get up each morning," Dietsch states.
Wendschuh adds that the only AI they use is for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton—publicly positioning itself as an “AI‑first” company—insisted that Wolf Haus not employ generative AI in the creative pipeline. This mirrors a similar stance from Neon Giant, another Krafton‑backed studio, which publicly denied using AI for its projects. The commitment to a human‑centric approach extends to the game’s assets.
The six‑kilometre‑square map is hand‑crafted, and all 15,000 voice lines were recorded by real actors, not synthetic voices. "That was non‑negotiable for us, even as a small indie," Dietsch emphasizes. Dietsch also reflects on the contrast between film and games.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring approvals, casting, and massive budgets before a director sees it on set. In game development, an inspiration can be prototyped in a matter of hours, allowing immediate feedback and rapid iteration.
"You can think of an idea in the morning, drop it into the engine, and see it instantly—that immediacy is exhilarating," he says. Wendschuh notes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with intense pre‑production phases to secure high‑profile talent and studio green‑lights. While anyone can shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without marquee names or distribution is rare.
By contrast, the video‑game market has fewer gatekeepers; a small team can reach a global audience without A‑list actors or directors. Both mediums, however, share a common creative drive: storytelling and immersion.
"When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games—it boiled down to a coin toss and whether I got a camera for Christmas. I learned programming on a TI‑83, so the passion has always been there. Whether you’re crafting a film or a game, you’re delivering an experience, telling a story, and engaging the audience. That core purpose never changes," Dietsch concludes.