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 charge on pigs, unleash machine‑guns, and the finale hints at Cthulhu‑like tentacles. One detail that didn’t make the public cut was the infamous snake gun, a quirky weapon that originated from a simple suggestion by a team member’s child. Joe Dietsch, the CEO and creative director of Wolf Haus Games, recounts that his son asked, “Can there be a snake gun?” Thanks to an in‑house tool that can rapidly prototype weapons, Dietsch whipped up a functional snake‑shooting gun in roughly thirty minutes.
The result was a mind‑blowing surprise for the youngster and a permanent fixture in the game. That anecdote encapsulates the chaotic, over‑the‑top gameplay that Join Us promises: an open‑world sandbox survival experience where players can recruit followers—or invite friends in co‑op mode—to build a 1970s‑style cult. It also illustrates the studio’s technology‑first philosophy, which has enabled a small crew to produce a high‑fidelity title that would normally require a much larger staff.
Michael Abbott, the chief operating officer, summed it up succinctly: “We wanted to be disruptors. We told everyone we could build this with twelve people, and they laughed.” The team’s confidence stems from a background in indie filmmaking, where they learned to punch far above their budgetary weight. After eighty pitches, Wolf Haus finally secured equity funding from Krafton and Lifelike Capital, both of which took stakes in the studio. The founders’ Hollywood roots run deep.
Dietsch studied film at Chapman University alongside Louie Gibson, son of Mel Gibson, who also co‑founded Wolf Haus. Together they 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 his transition to Star Citizen. Abbott later produced movies such as Fight for ’84 starring Jamie Foxx.
Join Us began as a personal experiment in Unreal Engine. “I discovered Unreal was free to download and started tinkering after watching YouTube tutorials,” Dietsch explains. Although he had never built a game before, he managed to create a few small prototypes before committing to a larger vision: a doomsday cult simulator that merged his love of survival games with grindhouse cinema. He built a proof‑of‑concept demo, ran it by Abbott, and the latter took it to Dooma, the studio’s early publishing partner.
Dooma Wendschuh, the studio’s CFO and narrative director, entered the video‑game arena after a career in film production and screenwriting. He founded Sekretagent Productions, providing writing services for titles like Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones, Assassin’s Creed, and Batman: Arkham Origins.
Later he launched several tech ventures, including the cannabis‑formulation firm Ebbu, which sold for roughly C$430 million. After a brief retirement on a remote Canadian island, a call from his old Hollywood roommate Michael Abbott pulled him back into game development.
Impressed by Dietsch’s demo, Wendschuh helped bring in strategic advisor Reid Schneider, former Warner Bros. Games VP, and CTO Pierre‑Olivier Chartrand, a veteran programmer from Ubisoft Montreal. Funding proved challenging amid an industry downturn.
The team began pitching in summer 2023, received encouragement but also skepticism, and eventually partnered with CAA in Los Angeles to refine their approach. Their persistence paid off in 2024 when Lifelike Capital and Krafton closed a seed round, providing the capital needed to finish the game. Despite the modest headcount—thirteen full‑time staff—the studio has maintained a collaborative atmosphere where every member contributes to creative decisions. Early in development they invested heavily in custom tooling.
“If a system exists, it must be scalable and debuggable by a single person,” says Dietsch. The first year was split between ideating gameplay and building the internal tools that would keep the open‑world map from collapsing under its own weight. The equity funding model gave Wolf Haus the runway to perfect those tools.
Krafton and Lifelike’s investments were used to self‑fund the game, with only a small portion of later financing earmarked for marketing. Because the investors’ returns depend on the studio’s enterprise value, they encouraged the team to keep building tools rather than cutting corners. “Whenever we hit a problem we don’t know how to solve, we build a tool,” Wendschuh notes, acknowledging the trade‑off of slower iteration for greater long‑term flexibility. When asked about generative AI, the team is unequivocal: they do not employ it in the creative pipeline.
“We believe a human touch is essential,” Dietsch asserts. The only AI they use is for mundane tasks like calendar management and email drafting. Krafton, despite branding itself as an “AI‑first” company, explicitly required Wolf Haus to avoid generative AI in game creation, echoing similar stances from other Krafton‑owned studios. All assets in Join Us are handcrafted.
The six‑kilometre‑square map was built by hand, and the game features roughly 15,000 voice lines recorded by real actors—an effort the team considers non‑negotiable, even for an indie title. This commitment reflects their broader philosophy that creative work should remain a human endeavour, not outsourced to algorithms that could displace voice talent and artists.
Dietsch highlights a key advantage of game development over filmmaking: immediacy. In movies, an idea can take years to materialise, requiring approvals, casting, and extensive pre‑production. In contrast, a game concept can be prototyped in a single morning, placed into the engine, and instantly visualised.
This rapid feedback loop fuels the studio’s creative energy and aligns with their desire to keep the process agile and hands‑on. While film production remains heavily front‑loaded—requiring star power and studio green‑lights—games offer a lower barrier to entry. “Anyone can rent a camera and shoot a backyard movie, but without big names or distribution it’s unlikely to break out,” Wendschuh observes. “In games, the gatekeepers are fewer, so a small, passionate team can achieve success without A‑list talent.” Both mediums, however, share a common goal: to deliver an experience, tell a story, and engage an audience.
Dietsch reflects that his childhood love of both film and programming led him to this crossroads, and that whether through a camera or a controller, the core creative impulse remains the same.