Sony is to shut the European Net Yaroze server this month.

Launched in March 1997, the Net Yaroze initiative – a £550 piece of tweaked PlayStation 1 hardware along with dev tools and the means to hook it up to PCs/Macs, together with an online support network – was a vital tool in the birth of the careers of many console programmers.

“We plan to make a copy of the site available for our original members,” Paul Holman, of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe R&D, told Develop.

You can read more about Net Yaroze in this feature, which traces the games industry career paths of a number of the programme’s users (thanks for the reminder, Offworld).