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Xbox girl-on-girl game upsets Singapore

Mass Effect banned

Singapore has banned the Xbox 360 video game Mass Effect because it apparently contains a raunchy lesbian love scene.


No video? You'll need to download Flash Player from www.adobe.com

Local newspaper the Straits Times reported today that the science fiction role-playing game - which is due to be released in the UK later this month* - has been rejected by Singapore’s Media Development Authority (MDA).

The motivation for the MDA's decision? The game supposedly shows a human woman and female alien kissing and caressing each other - a union the organisation believes inappropriate for gamers to examine.

Singaporean law prohibits games which feature "exploitative or gratuitous sex and violence, or denigrate any race or religion".

The MDA’s decision has apparently caused a mass outcry among gamers in the region, who have branded the organisation’s move as too strict.

Singapore has already banned other video games, including God of War 2 and The Darkness.

Singapore's second minister for information, communications and the arts, Vivian Balakrishnan, has claimed the city is "liberalising", while retaining "a very strong conservative core".

As an example, Agence France Presse notes the powers that be recently "legalised oral and anal sex between heterosexual couples but retained a law which criminalises intercourse between gay men".

*Form an orderly queue, please

Latest Comments

Am I missing something?

Surely thats not it? I mean if it is.... Then dang

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Shocking

And I thought that Singapore was a free port, everyone can get anything they wanted.

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Anonymous Coward

gratuitous

Doesn't 'gratuitous sex and violence' pretty much rule out every teen or above game, not to mention many Hollywood films?

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As a Singaporean myself.

I've been hating these strict laws since they started curbing titles deemed unnecessary for the public in the late 90s.

Didn't feel much of an impact till the day i wanted to get Rockstar's GTA3 and vice city box sets which was banned too.

All these years the authorities have only succeeded in making the young turn towards piracy and this in turn worsens their effort to curb piracy thru mediums such as the black market dvds and torrents.

Am just glad my wolfenstein era till quake 2 had their stinking paws still being nursed by their mommas.

PS: Long live Pirate_Bay

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s/he is asexual damnit

It isn't lesbian action, the alien species shown is asexual, ASEXUAL!

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