The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers ride pig‑mounted platforms, unleash a barrage of firearms, and ultimately confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the cut, according to Joe Dietsch—CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games—was the infamous “snake gun.” "One of the developers’ kids suggested a snake‑shooting weapon," Dietsch recalls. "We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that let us spin up a new gun in about thirty minutes, so I built a snake‑gun on the fly. The kid was thrilled, and the weapon stayed in the final build." That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit of Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game that lets players recruit followers—or fellow players in co‑op mode—to a 1970s‑style cult.
It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has enabled a high‑fidelity title to emerge from a surprisingly small development team. 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 experience with just twelve people. Most people laughed, but we proved them wrong.” The team’s confidence stems from a history of achieving big results on modest budgets.
“We come from indie filmmaking, where you learn to punch far above your weight,” Abbott says. After roughly eighty pitch meetings, Wolf Haus finally secured equity financing from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the studio.
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 he turned his attention 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 was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt there was a huge barrier to actually creating something,” he explains.
He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, eventually crafting a few small prototypes. The idea that stuck was a doomsday cult simulator that fused survival mechanics with grindhouse cinema aesthetics—essentially a mash‑up of his favorite movie and game tropes.
He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, assuming it would quickly hit a technical wall. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and introduced it to Dooma, a production partner. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had previously worked as a film producer and screenwriter before moving into games in the early 2000s, contributing writing to titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
Wendschuh later founded several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million (about US$330 million). After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote island restaurant in Canada, intending to retire and enjoy a quiet life. Yet, in classic Hollywood fashion, a call from his old roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into the industry.
"I saw the prototype and it blew my mind," Wendschuh says, prompting him to join the project. He then recruited Reid Schneider—former VP at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic—and Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, an ex‑Ubisoft Montreal programmer, to serve as strategic advisor and chief technology officer respectively. With the core team in place, the next hurdle was financing—a difficult task given the industry downturn that began in 2023.
The studio began pitching in the summer of that year, receiving enthusiastic but cautious feedback. After signing with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and re‑pitching in 2024, Wolf Haus finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits CAA’s connections, noting that their representation of titles like 007: First Light and the presence of seasoned veterans such as Schneider and Chartrand were instrumental in gaining investor confidence.
Despite the high‑profile backing, the studio has deliberately kept its headcount low—thirteen full‑time staff members at the time of writing. "We entered the project knowing exactly what we wanted to achieve," says Dietsch, emphasizing the desire to maintain a small‑team culture where every voice matters and each person can touch both creative and technical aspects. To make a sprawling open‑world game feasible with such a lean crew, Wolf Haus invested heavily in custom tooling from the outset. "Every system must be scalable and debuggable by a single developer," Dietsch explains.
The first year of development was split between ideating gameplay and building the internal toolset that would later allow the world to expand without collapsing under its own complexity. This tool‑centric philosophy also aligns with the studio’s equity‑funded model: Krafton and Lifelike’s capital has been used to self‑fund the game, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing.
One notable aspect of the funding arrangement is the investors’ encouragement of tool development. "Our backers are motivated to increase the studio’s enterprise value, so they support our tool‑building ethos," Wendschuh notes. "When we encounter a problem we don’t know how to solve, we simply create a tool to address it. It may slow development in the short term, but it enables us to accomplish ambitious goals with a tiny team." In an industry where generative AI is often touted as a shortcut for small studios, Wolf Haus has taken a firm stance against its use in creative production.
"We don’t employ generative AI for any artistic work," Dietsch says. "The human touch is essential to why we get up every morning and make games." Wendschuh adds that while the team uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, it is deliberately excluded from any design, writing, or asset‑creation processes.
Interestingly, Krafton—publicly positioning itself as an "AI‑first" company—specifically required that Wolf Haus refrain from using generative AI in the game's development, mirroring a similar stance taken by Krafton‑owned Neon Giant. The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map is entirely hand‑built, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices. "Even as a small indie, we felt it was vital to preserve that level of authenticity," Dietsch asserts.
Dietsch also reflects on the differences between filmmaking and game development. In film, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and massive budgets before a director finally sees it on set.
By contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, inserted into the engine, and instantly visualised. This immediacy, he argues, fuels his passion for interactive media.
Wendschuh points out that film production is heavily front‑loaded: securing high‑profile talent and studio greenlights dominates the early stages, making it difficult for a low‑budget, unknown project to break through. Video games, however, have far fewer gatekeepers.
"You don’t need an A‑list actor or director to make a successful game," he says, noting that the lower barrier to entry increases the odds for indie creators. Both founders agree that the core creative drive remains the same across mediums: to craft an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience.
"When I was six, I wanted to make either movies or games; it came down to a coin toss and a Christmas camera," Dietsch muses. "Whether it’s film or a game, the goal is to immerse people in a narrative and make them feel something. That fundamental impulse hasn’t changed."