Dedicated servers are "fundamental" to Nightingale, the survival game from former Mass Effect devs

Nightingale, the upcoming survival game from former BioWare devs, will have dedicated servers at launch - in fact, they're "fundamental" to the game.

"For Nightingale, we will have dedicated official servers at early access launch," community manager Steph Herdman explains in a new developer update video. "This means that if you're playing with friends and you invite them to your Realm and you all set that as your respite point, any one of you at any point will be able to start up that realm regardless of who is online. This is all included in the initial game offering as it's fundamental to our studio principle of 'fantastic spaces, meaningful places.'"

Emphasis on the "dedicated official servers" bit - private servers will not be available at launch. The team wants to make sure everyone's on official servers so they can track and analyze data on what issues are affecting the most players. The Realm Card system will also offer some of the difficulty settings and other modifiers you might generally get from private server options.

Private servers are not off the table, though, they just won't be there from day one of early access. "As we go through early access," Herdman says, "we should be able to share some more concrete information on the availability of private servers as well as when they can be implemented." It's the same story with mod support - that's a feature the devs are interested in, but it won't be available at the start.

Nightingale's early access version does not yet have a release date.

Nightingale's departure from the storytelling style of Mass Effect and Dragon Age is a deliberate step.