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 charge on pig‑back while brandishing machine guns, culminating in a nightmarish vision of colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles.
One element that didn’t make the final cut was the infamous snake gun, a quirky weapon that originated from a simple suggestion by a team member’s child. As Joe Dietsch, CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, recalls, “My teammate’s son asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a rapid‑prototyping tool, so within half an hour I built a gun that actually fires snakes. It blew his mind, and we kept it in the game.” That anecdote encapsulates the chaotic, improvisational spirit of Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival title where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult. It also highlights the studio’s technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a relatively tiny crew to produce a high‑fidelity experience that would normally require a much larger workforce.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: “We wanted to be disruptors. We told ourselves, ‘We don’t need a hundred people; twelve can do it.’ Everyone thought we were crazy.” The team’s confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where they learned to “punch above their weight.” After roughly eighty pitches, they finally secured equity investment 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, who later co‑founded Wolf Haus and co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie films Happy Hunting and Manifest West. Abbott is the son of renowned makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before his shift to Star Citizen.
Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us emerged from Dietsch’s early experiments with Unreal Engine.
“I discovered Unreal was free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt there was a massive barrier to actually creating something,” he explains. He taught himself through YouTube tutorials, built a few modest prototypes, and eventually gravitated toward a doomsday‑cult concept that fused his love of survival games with grindhouse cinema. The proof‑of‑concept was raw but promising, and when he showed it to Abbott, the latter immediately took it to Dooma, a partner studio.
Dooma Wendschuh, Wolf Haus’s CFO and narrative director, began his career as a film producer and screenwriter before transitioning to video games in the early 2000s. He founded Sekretagent Productions, which supplied narrative work for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. In the 2010s he launched several tech ventures, including the cannabis‑formulation company Ebbu, later sold for roughly C$430 million (US$330 million). 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 development. Impressed by Dietsch’s demo, Wendschuh left his retirement, brought the project to Reid Schneider—former VP at Warner Bros.
Games and now head of Raccoon Logic—and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was financing, a task made tougher by an industry downturn that began in 2023.
Initial pitches generated polite interest but no commitments. After signing with CAA in Los Angeles and refining their pitch, the studio returned to investors in 2024 and finally closed a seed round with Lifelike Capital and Krafton. Wendschuh credits CAA’s representation—alongside high‑profile titles like 007: First Light—and the credibility of veterans Schneider and Chartrand for opening doors. Despite the heavyweight backing, Wolf Haus has remained a lean operation, employing only 13 full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the small size is intentional: “We wanted a studio where everyone has a voice, where every person touches the creative process, and where the final product truly reflects a tightly knit group.” To make such an ambitious open‑world game feasible with limited manpower, the studio invested heavily in internal tooling from the outset. "If a system exists in the game, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch notes. "We built a robust toolkit early on so that as features proliferated across the six‑kilometre‑square map, the project wouldn’t collapse under its own weight." The funding structure also gave the team breathing room to perfect those tools.
Krafton and Lifelike’s equity stakes meant the development budget was essentially self‑funded; only a modest amount of project finance has been earmarked for marketing. This arrangement aligns investor incentives with the studio’s ethos of tool‑driven development: whenever a problem arises, the team builds a bespoke solution, even if it slows short‑term progress, because it enables long‑term scalability. In an era where many studios tout generative‑AI pipelines, Wolf Haus deliberately steers clear of AI‑generated content.
Dietsch offers a blunt answer: "We don’t use any generative AI. A human touch is essential to our games; handing creation over to an algorithm defeats why we get up in the morning." Wendschuh adds that while the studio uses AI for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting, it never touches the creative pipeline. Interestingly, Krafton, which has publicly positioned itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required that Wolf Haus not rely on generative AI for core development. This mirrors a similar stance taken by Neon Giant, another Krafton‑owned studio.
The commitment to handcrafted artistry extends to the game’s world and audio. The entire six‑kilometre‑square map was built by hand, and Join Us features roughly 15,000 voice lines recorded by human actors—an effort the team considered non‑negotiable, even for an indie title.
Dietsch reflects on the contrast between filmmaking and game development. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, subject to studio approvals, casting, and scheduling.
By contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, inserted into the engine, and instantly visualized. This immediacy fuels his enthusiasm: "You can have an idea at breakfast and see it on screen by lunch. That speed is exhilarating." Wendschuh observes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, requiring star talent and studio greenlights before any footage is shot.
While anyone can technically shoot a backyard movie, breaking through without marquee names or distribution is rare. 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 the democratizing power of interactive media. Both founders agree that storytelling is the common thread linking their two passions.
Dietsch recalls a childhood coin toss that determined whether he’d pursue games or movies, noting that he learned programming on a TI‑83 calculator and received a camera for Christmas. "Whether you’re making a film or a game, you’re crafting an experience, telling a story, and engaging an audience. That core impulse hasn’t changed." In summary, Wolf Haus’s journey illustrates how a small, Hollywood‑infused team can leverage in‑house technology, strategic financing, and a steadfast belief in handcrafted creativity to deliver a large‑scale, high‑quality game without resorting to generative AI. Their upcoming title, Join Us, stands as a testament to what can be achieved when a tight‑knit group of passionate creators embraces tool‑building, rejects shortcuts, and focuses on delivering a uniquely human experience.