GTA 6 Just Got a Wild New Rival, and We're Here For It

This cult-focused game looks like the weirdest possible rival to Grand Theft Auto VI you could possibly ask for, but at the same time… I’ve not seen any GTA VI screenshots featuring Jason or Lucia riding a pig into battle, have you? Checkmate, Rockstar Games.

Video game trailers these days don’t really seem to have much of an effect on me.

I’ve just been burned too many times before, I guess. Sometimes they don’t feature any gameplay, which means the game ends up looking nothing like the pre-rendered footage. Other times, the gameplay looks cool, and then the game takes four years to come out (by which time, I’ve forgotten it even existed in the first place).

The trailer for Join Us that popped up during the PC Gaming Show Tokyo Direct last week has stuck in my mind, however. If you’ve already watched it yourself, I probably don’t have to explain why.

Join Us is an open-world surival third person shooter RPG (try saying that ten times fast) set to launch in 2026, developed and published by Wolf Haus Games.

It looks to be equal parts Grand Theft Auto VI and Cult of the Lamb, tasking players with building their own cult, by doing stuff like spreading propaganda, taming wild animals (so you ride them into combat), and, of course, gunning down your enemies in cold blood. So far, so good.

But hey, what if I want to raise a peaceful, hippie-style cult? According to Wolf Haus Games’ CEO and co-founder Joe Dietsch, that’s very much an option.

“There's a dynamic skill tree that evolves as the game goes on," Dietsch revealed during an interview with PC Gamer.

“So [if] we want to be a cult that's into violence, we can become a very violent cult. If we want to become a druid cult, we can go in that direction. If we want to get into UFOs or ghosts, all of those things become options, and then those affect your player narrative as the game progresses.”

Perhaps, however, it’s not entirely fair to refer to Join Us as a direct GTA VI competitor, because the developers are choosing to do the inverse with the game’s release platforms.

For now, Join Us is only confirmed to be coming to Steam at an unspecified date in 2026. Makes me wonder whether it’ll come to consoles before GTA VI manages to make its way to PC.

Personally, my money is on the former outcome. Here’s hoping Rockstar Games drops that PC port at some point in the 2020s, though.