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 pig‑back, brandishing machine guns, before the screen fades to an image of massive, Cthulhu‑like tentacles. What didn’t make the final edit was the now‑infamous snake gun, a quirky weapon that emerged from an off‑hand suggestion by a developer’s child.
"One of the kids on the team asked, ‘What would a snake‑gun look like?’" recalls Joe Dietsch, the studio’s CEO and creative director. "We had a rapid‑prototyping tool that lets us scale weapons in minutes, so I whipped up a gun that fires serpents in about half an hour.
The kid was thrilled, and the weapon stuck around in the final build." That anecdote captures the chaotic, sandbox‑style gameplay Join Us promises: an open‑world survival experience where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult empire. It also illustrates Wolf Haus Games’ technology‑first mindset, which has allowed a tiny crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff. Michael Abbott, the company’s chief operating officer, summed up their ambition: "We set out to be disruptors. We told everyone we could deliver a AAA‑ish experience with just twelve people, and most people laughed at us." 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 well above your weight," Abbott explains. After 80 pitch meetings, Wolf Haus finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, giving the studio the financial runway it needed.
Wolf Haus’ founders are steeped in Hollywood lore. Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson—son of actor‑director 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, a production company originally founded by Chris Roberts before his transition to Star Citizen. Abbott’s film résumé also includes producing credits on titles such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
The seed of Join Us sprouted when Dietsch began experimenting with Unreal Engine. "Unreal is free to download, and I’d always loved games, but the barrier to actually building one felt huge," he says. He taught himself the engine through YouTube tutorials, eventually crafting a few modest prototypes.
The idea that stuck with him was a doomsday cult simulator that blended survival mechanics with grindhouse‑film aesthetics—a hybrid he felt could become a unique intellectual property. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, expecting it to hit a technical wall quickly. When he showed the demo to Abbott, the latter recognized its potential and passed it on to Dooma, the studio’s early‑stage partner. Dooma’s CFO and narrative director, Dooma Wendschuh, had a film background as a producer and screenwriter before moving into 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. Later, Wendschuh launched several tech ventures, most notably the cannabis formulation company Ebbu, sold for roughly C$430 million.
After selling Ebbu, Wendschuh bought a remote restaurant on a tiny Canadian island, planning a quiet retirement. Yet a call from his old Hollywood‑Hills roommate, Michael Abbott, pulled him back. "I was looking at a game Joe had built, and it completely blew my mind," Wendschuh says, prompting him to exit retirement and join the project. He brought on Reid Schneider, a former Warner Bros.
Games VP now heading Raccoon Logic, as a strategic advisor, and recruited Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a former Ubisoft Montreal programmer, as chief technology officer. With the core team in place, the next hurdle was financing—a daunting task during the industry downturn of 2023‑24.
The studio pitched relentlessly, eventually partnering with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles. Their persistence paid off when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed a seed round, providing the capital needed to keep development on track. Despite the high‑profile backers, Wolf Haus remains a lean operation, employing just 13 full‑time staff members. Dietsch emphasizes that this small size is intentional: "We wanted a studio where every voice matters, where everyone can touch the creative process, and where the final product feels like the work of a tightly knit group." To make such an ambitious open‑world game feasible with a tiny crew, the studio invested heavily in custom tooling early on.
"Any system we build must be scalable and debuggable by a single person," Dietsch notes. The team spent the first year simultaneously designing gameplay concepts and engineering the internal tools that would later allow those concepts to scale across a six‑kilometre‑square map without collapsing under their own weight.
This tool‑first philosophy also aligns with the investors’ expectations; both Krafton and Lifelike encourage the studio to develop robust pipelines, even if it slows immediate progress, because it safeguards the long‑term viability of the project. When asked about the role of generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not rely on it for creative work. "We believe a game needs a human touch," Dietsch asserts. "We have a few AI subscriptions for mundane tasks like calendar management, but nothing that influences design, art, or narrative." Krafton’s stance mirrors that of its other subsidiaries.
Although the Korean publisher has branded itself as an "AI‑first" company, it explicitly prohibited Wolf Haus from using generative AI in the creative pipeline, fearing it could dilute the studio’s artistic integrity and jeopardize jobs for voice actors and artists. As a result, every element of Join Us—from the hand‑crafted terrain to the 15,000 voice lines recorded by real actors—was produced without AI assistance. Dietsch reflects on the contrast between filmmaking and game development.
In cinema, an idea can take years to materialise, subject to countless approvals and the need for star power. In games, the same concept can be prototyped in a single morning, tested instantly, and iterated upon without gatekeepers.
"You don’t need an A‑list director or actor to get a game green‑lit," he says. "The barriers to entry are far lower, which makes the medium incredibly empowering for creators." Both mediums, however, share a common goal: delivering an experience that tells a story and engages an audience.
Dietsch’s childhood ambition—to make either movies or games—ultimately led him down a path where those passions intersect. "Whether you’re crafting a film or a game, you’re trying to immerse someone in a narrative and make them feel something. The tools differ, but the creative impulse is the same," he concludes.
Join Us is poised to launch as a testament to what a small, focused team can achieve when they combine Hollywood storytelling sensibilities, entrepreneurial grit, and bespoke technology—without leaning on generative AI. The game promises a wild, satirical ride through cult‑building chaos, backed by a development story that is itself as unconventional and daring as the world it invites players to explore.