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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.
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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
Biting the hand that feeds IT
