Singapore has banned the sale of an Xbox video game that features an intimate scene between two female characters.
The “Mass Effect” game, a futuristic space adventure, contains “a scene of lesbian intimacy… as such the game has been disallowed,” the deputy director of the Board of Film Censors said in the statement.

Under local guidelines, video games sold in Singapore cannot “feature exploitative or gratuitous sex and violence, or denigrate any race or religion,” the official said.

“Mass Effect” is to be launched globally next week.

US software giant Microsoft, maker of the Xbox gaming console, said it respected the media watchdog’s action.

Earlier this year the city-state banned two other video games, “God of War II” for nudity and “The Darkness” for excessive violence and religiously offensive expletives, the statement said.

Vivian Balakrishnan, Singapore’s second minister for information, communications and the arts, has said the city-state was liberalising but retained a very strong conservative core.