Is it still just rumors, or has it already been confirmed that the project was abandoned? Sometimes developers have a lot of work and have no time to answer all the questions in the forum ...

Well they had the time to take down their webpages and every detail linking them to this project so... Effort went into something, and it wasn't Public Relations.
I thought they were just sitting quietly or changing the communication channel .. If everything already disappeared it certainly did not happen by accident..