The Gameband, formerly known as the Atari Gameband, looked like a promising gaming-focused smartwatch during its successful Kickstarter campaign last year. Despite raising a total of $500,000 between Kickstarter backers and other investors, the Gameband has officially been killed. Worst of all, backers may never receive a refund

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The Gameband (formerly Atari Gameband), which promised to bring retro-styled mini-games to the wearable world, successfully raised over US $325,000 during its Kickstarter campaign last year. Sadly, despite its Kickstarter success and other financial backing ($500,000 in total), the Gameband has officially been canceled and will not ship to backers.

Feargal Mac Conuladh, the CEO of FMTwo Game Inc., announced that the team behind the Gameband would not continue development. In an update on Kickstarter (available only to backers), he said:

“Ultimately the time, cost, and complexity have turned out to be far more challenging than we expected, and as a startup we simply do not have the finances or resources to continue to forge ahead. We have looked at it from many angles, met with new potential partners, and tried to find additional funding to keep going, however we have not been able to make progress.”

Of course, the first question backers have concern refunds. To that end, Conuladh said that the team “will do our utmost to do so, and in fact we are determined to do so if and when we can. For now that is not the case. Our costs have far exceeded the $500k to date as we have dealt with the delays and technical challenges.”

That doesn’t sound too promising. Considering this is the first update from the team since April (which was a simple “We’re still here!” update), backers are not confident they will see their money again. Also, considering that Conuladh was involved with the development of the Atari VCS at the same time he was overseeing the Gameband, and considering the fact that Conuladh was later fired from Atari, there may be more to the story here.