The trailer for Join Us made a splash during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous co‑op cult simulator where robed followers ride pigs, wield machine guns, and confront colossal, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One element that didn’t appear in the teaser was the infamous snake gun, a feature that Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, proudly attributes to a spontaneous idea from a team member’s child. "His son asked, ‘What if there’s a snake gun?’" Dietsch recalls. "Because we built a flexible weapon‑creation tool, I could prototype a snake‑shooting gun in about thirty minutes.
It blew his mind, and we kept it in the final build." That anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit at the heart of Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival experience that lets players recruit followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates why Wolf Haus leans heavily on custom technology: the studio has managed to produce a high‑fidelity, content‑rich title with a remarkably small development headcount. Michael Abbott, the studio’s chief operating officer, summed up their philosophy: "We set out to be disruptors.
While everyone told us a twelve‑person team couldn’t deliver a AAA‑level game, we knew from indie‑film work that a lean crew can punch well above its weight." The founders’ backgrounds are steeped in Hollywood. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who now serves as a co‑founder. Together they co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie features Happy Hunting and Manifest West. Abbott, meanwhile, is the son of veteran makeup artist Larry Abbott and helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to Star Citizen.
Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84, starring Jamie Foxx. Join Us originated from Dietsch’s early experiments in Unreal Engine.
"Unreal is free to download, and I’d always loved games but felt the barrier to creation was huge," he explains. He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, built a few tiny prototypes, and eventually settled on the idea of a doomsday‑cult simulator—a hybrid of survival mechanics, grindhouse cinema aesthetics, and the narrative freedom of games.
He produced a proof‑of‑concept demo, showed it to Abbott, and the two took it to Dooma, a production partner that helped shape the vision. The studio’s financial journey was anything but smooth.
After 80 pitches, Wolf Haus finally secured equity investment from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took minority stakes. Their CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, brings a unique blend of film and tech experience.
He began as a screenwriter and producer before founding Sekretagent Productions, which supplied narrative work for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins. Later, he built and sold a cannabis‑formulation company for roughly C$430 million, then retired to a remote Canadian island—only to be lured back into game development by an old Hollywood‑hill roommate. Wendschuh’s return sparked the recruitment of industry veterans: Reid Schneider, former VP at Warner Bros. Games, joined as a strategic advisor, and Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, became chief technology officer.
With this talent in place, the studio turned its attention to funding. The market downturn of 2023 made pitching difficult, but after aligning with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and leveraging Schneider’s and Chartrand’s reputations, Wolf Haus closed a seed round in early 2024.
Despite the high‑profile backing, the development team remains tiny—13 full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that the small size is intentional: "We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative process, and to feel ownership of the final product." To make such an ambitious open‑world possible, the studio invested heavily in internal tooling from day one. "Any system in the game must be scalable and debuggable by a single developer," Dietsch notes. "We built a toolkit that lets us expand features across a massive map without the project collapsing under its own weight." The equity financing model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect those tools.
Krafton and Lifelike’s capital funded the entire development, with only a modest amount of project finance earmarked for marketing. "Equity partners want the studio to increase enterprise value, so they encourage us to build robust tools," says Wendschuh. "When we hit a problem we don’t know how to solve, we simply create a tool to address it. It may slow us down short‑term, but it enables a small crew to deliver a game of this scale." When asked about generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not use it for creative work.
"Our philosophy is that a game needs a human touch," Dietsch explains. "We might use AI for mundane tasks like calendar management, but never for art, design, or narrative." Even Krafton, which has publicly positioned itself as an "AI‑first" company, insisted that Wolf Haus remain AI‑free in its creative pipeline.
Wendschuh adds, "We respect creative professionals and don’t want AI to displace voice actors or artists. All 15,000 voice lines in Join Us were recorded by human talent, and the six‑kilometre‑square map was handcrafted." Dietsch reflects on the contrast between film and games: in cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, subject to studio approvals and star power. In games, the same concept can be prototyped in a morning, instantly visualised in the engine, and iterated upon without needing an A‑list director or actor. "The gatekeepers are far fewer in interactive media," he says, noting that anyone can publish a game, whereas a low‑budget film rarely finds an audience without major names attached.
Both mediums, however, share a common purpose: to deliver an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience. Dietsch’s childhood ambition—to make either movies or games—ultimately led him down a path where the two disciplines intersect, proving that a small, determined team with the right tools and a clear creative vision can rival the output of far larger studios.