The trailer for Join Us first appeared during the Xbox Showcase in June, offering a glimpse of a darkly humorous cooperative cult‑simulation. In the clip, robed followers zip around on pigs, unleash a hail of gunfire, and the sequence culminates with a monstrous, Cthulhu‑like mass of tentacles. What didn’t make it onto the screen was the infamous "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.
"One of the team members’ kids asked, ‘What would a snake‑shooting gun look like?’ We had a modular weapon system that let us prototype something in roughly thirty minutes, so I built it on the fly. The kid went nuts, and the snake gun stayed in the final build," Dietsch recalls.
This anecdote captures the chaotic, improvisational spirit that defines Join Us, an open‑world sandbox survival game where players can recruit NPC followers—or friends in co‑op mode—to form a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has enabled a high‑fidelity title to be produced by a remarkably small crew.
Michael Abbott, Wolf Haus’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We set out to be disruptors. Everyone told us a twelve‑person team couldn’t deliver a game of this scope. We proved them wrong." Their confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where small budgets and lean crews are the norm.
Abbott’s family has deep roots in Hollywood; his father, Larry Abbott, is a veteran makeup artist, and Michael himself helped launch Ascendant Pictures, the production company founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to the Star Citizen universe. He later produced films such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
The path to funding was anything but smooth. Wolf Haus pitched the concept a staggering eighty times before securing equity investments from Krafton and Lifelike Capital. Both investors took stakes in the studio, providing the capital needed to move from prototype to full production.
The founding trio’s Hollywood pedigree runs deep. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson and another Wolf Haus co‑founder.
Together they co‑wrote and co‑directed the indie features Happy Hunting and Manifest West. Abbott’s early career included a stint at Ascendant Pictures, while the studio’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, transitioned from film production and screenwriting to video‑game narrative work in the early 2000s. Wendschuh founded Sekretagent Productions, contributing writing to titles such as Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins, before launching several tech ventures, including the cannabis‑formulation company Ebbu, later sold for roughly C$430 million. Wendschuh’s personal story adds a cinematic twist.
After selling Ebbu, he purchased a remote restaurant on a tiny Canadian island, planning a quiet retirement. Yet a sudden call from his old Hollywood‑hill roommate, Michael Abbott, about a video‑game project pulled him back into the industry. "I watched the demo Joe put together and it blew my mind.
It was the spark that got me out of retirement," he says. He then introduced Reid Schneider—formerly a vice‑president at Warner Bros. Games and now head of Raccoon Logic—to serve as a strategic advisor, and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With the core team assembled, the next hurdle was financing during a market downturn.
The studio began pitching in summer 2023, a period marked by industry contraction. Initial outreach yielded interest but no commitments, prompting Wolf Haus to enlist Creative Artists Agency (CAA) as representation.
After a second round of pitches in 2024, the seed round closed with Krafton and Lifelike Capital on board. Wendschuh credits CAA’s clout—and the presence of seasoned game veterans like Schneider and Chartrand—for opening doors that might otherwise have remained closed. Despite the high‑profile backing, Join Us remains a product of a lean operation: just thirteen full‑time staff members.
Dietsch emphasizes that the small‑team ethos was intentional: "We wanted everyone to have a voice, to touch the creative process, and to feel ownership of the final experience." Achieving a large‑scale open world with such a compact crew required a heavy upfront investment in proprietary tools. The studio built a flexible, scalable system that a single developer could debug and extend, ensuring that as new features spread across the map, the engine wouldn’t buckle under its own weight. In Dietsch’s words, "The first year was as much about building the toolkit as it was about designing the game." The equity‑funded model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect these tools without the pressure of short‑term milestones. "Krafton and Lifelike’s capital funded the entire development, allowing us to self‑finance the game," explains Wendschuh.
"We only tapped external project finance for marketing later on." This structure aligns investor incentives with the studio’s long‑term vision: building reusable technology that can serve future projects, even if it slows immediate progress. When asked about generative AI—a hot topic in game development—Dietsch gave a blunt answer: "We don’t use it at all in the creative pipeline. The human touch is essential to us." Wendschuh adds that the studio’s only AI usage is administrative, such as calendar management and email drafting. Interestingly, Krafton, which has publicly positioned itself as an "AI‑first" company, explicitly required that Wolf Haus avoid generative AI in its creative workflow, echoing similar statements from other Krafton‑owned studios like Neon Giant.
The commitment to handcrafted content extends to the game’s world and audio. The six‑kilometre‑square map was manually designed, and the 15,000 voice lines were recorded by human actors, not synthetic voices.
Dietsch believes this level of artisanal detail is vital, even for an indie title, to preserve immersion and emotional resonance. Transitioning from film to games, Dietsch highlights the immediacy of interactive media. In cinema, an idea can take years to materialize, requiring countless approvals and a massive production pipeline.
In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped within hours: "You can have an idea this morning, drop it into the engine, and see it in action the same day. That instant feedback loop is exhilarating." Wendschuh notes that film production is heavily front‑loaded, with extensive pre‑production negotiations to secure high‑profile talent before a studio will green‑light a project.
While anyone can technically shoot a low‑budget film, breaking through without star power or distribution is rare. Games, however, have far fewer gatekeepers; a small team can reach a global audience without A‑list actors or directors. This democratization is a core reason the team believes their approach can succeed.
Both founders agree that whether you’re crafting a movie or a video game, the ultimate goal is the same: to tell a story, create an experience, and engage an audience. Dietsch’s childhood fascination with both mediums—programming on a TI‑83 calculator and dreaming of a camera for Christmas—has come full circle. "It’s a coin toss between film and games, but the creative impulse remains identical," he says. In summary, Wolf Haus’s journey illustrates how a handful of Hollywood‑seasoned creators leveraged their film experience, entrepreneurial savvy from the cannabis sector, and a custom‑built tech stack to produce a sprawling, high‑quality cult simulator without relying on generative AI.
Their story underscores the power of small, focused teams, strategic equity partnerships, and a relentless commitment to handcrafted artistry in an industry increasingly dominated by large studios and AI‑driven pipelines.