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 preview, robed followers charge on pig‑mounted platforms, brandishing machine guns, before the screen cuts to an ominous image of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One detail that didn’t make the final cut was the “snake gun,” a weapon that, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—originated from a child’s off‑hand suggestion. "My team member’s son asked, ‘What would a snake‑gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a new firearm in about thirty minutes.
I built it on the fly, and the kid was thrilled. It stayed in the game," Dietsch recalls. This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game where players can recruit AI followers or friends to join a 1970s‑style cult.
It also illustrates why the studio’s technology‑first mindset matters: it lets a tiny crew deliver a high‑fidelity experience that would normally require a much larger staff. Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, sums up the ambition succinctly: "We wanted to be disruptors.
We told ourselves, ‘We don’t need a hundred‑person studio; twelve people can do this.’ Everyone else thought we were crazy." Their confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where small budgets and lean crews are the norm. Abbott notes that his family’s Hollywood make‑up artistry heritage and his own experience setting up Ascendant Pictures—originally founded by Chris Roberts before the Star Citizen era—taught him how to punch far above his weight. After 80 pitches, the team finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in Wolf Haus.
The founders’ Hollywood roots run 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 make‑up artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, later producing films such as Fight for ’84 with Jamie Foxx.
This blend of cinematic storytelling and entrepreneurial grit informs the game’s narrative tone and visual flair. Join Us began as a personal experiment in Unreal Engine.
"Unreal was free to download, and I’d been a gamer my whole life, but the barrier to actually creating something felt huge. I started watching YouTube tutorials and tinkering," Dietsch explains. He quickly built a few tiny prototypes before committing to a larger vision: a doomsday cult simulator that fuses survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics. The initial proof‑of‑concept was rough, but it impressed Abbott enough to bring it to Dooma, a development partner.
Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, entered the picture after a career that spanned film production, screenwriting, and video‑game narrative work. In the early 2000s he founded Sekretagent Productions, providing writing services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
He later sold a cannabis‑formulation company, Ebbu, for roughly C$430 million. After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, a call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the industry. Wendschuh was instantly taken by Dietsch’s demo and helped recruit industry veterans such as Reid Schneider—formerly a vice president at Warner Bros. Games—and Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as strategic advisor and chief technology officer respectively.
Funding proved to be the next major hurdle. The team began pitching in the summer of 2023, a period marked by a broader industry downturn.
Despite positive reactions to the concept, securing capital was difficult. After enlisting Creative Artists Agency (CAA) as representation and persisting through multiple rounds of pitches, Wolf Haus finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton in early 2024.
Wendschuh credits CAA’s influence—especially the involvement of agent Derek Douglas, who previously represented him during his own twelve‑year stint in game development—as a decisive factor. What truly sets Join Us apart is how it is being built. With only thirteen full‑time staff members, the studio deliberately kept the team small to preserve a collaborative atmosphere where every voice matters. To make such an ambitious open‑world title feasible, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling from day one.
"Every system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," says Dietsch. The first year of development was split between designing gameplay concepts and engineering the internal toolset that would later allow those concepts to flourish across a six‑kilometre‑square map. The equity funding model gave the studio the runway needed to perfect these tools. Krafton and Lifelike’s capital was used primarily to finance development rather than external publishing costs.
"Our investors have a vested interest in increasing the studio’s enterprise value, so they support our tool‑building ethos," Wendschuh notes. This approach sometimes slows feature implementation, but it enables a tiny team to produce a game that would otherwise be impossible. In an industry increasingly obsessed with generative AI, Wolf Haus has taken a clear stance: they do not employ AI for creative tasks. "We believe a human touch is essential.
Using AI to generate assets would defeat why we get up each morning," Dietsch says. Wendschuh adds that while the team uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management, none of it touches the artistic side of development. Interestingly, Krafton—an "AI‑first" company—explicitly required that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in its creative pipeline, mirroring similar policies at other Krafton‑owned studios such as Neon Giant. All of the game’s environments are handcrafted, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, underscoring the studio’s commitment to artisanal production.
Dietsch contrasts the immediacy of game development with the protracted timelines of film. In movies, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and studio green‑lights.
In games, an idea can be prototyped in a single morning, tested instantly in the engine, and iterated upon without waiting for external gatekeepers. This freedom, he argues, lowers the barrier to entry and democratizes success: "You don’t need an A‑list star or director to make a hit game." Both mediums, however, share a common creative impulse—to tell stories and deliver experiences. Dietsch reflects on his childhood, when a coin toss decided whether he would pursue games or movies. He learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator and has since blended his love for both forms.
"Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re crafting an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. The tools differ, but the goal is the same," he concludes.
Join Us therefore represents more than a quirky cult simulator; it is a proof‑of‑concept that a small, tightly knit team equipped with bespoke tools and a clear creative philosophy can compete with far larger studios—without leaning on generative AI. The game’s development journey, from a teenage‑inspired snake gun to a fully funded, high‑polish product, showcases how Hollywood savvy, tech ingenuity, and a willingness to defy industry conventions can converge to produce something truly disruptive.