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Sex scene coverage on the internet
Controversy over the sexual content of Mass Effect occurred when conservative blogger Kevin McCullough wrote an article titled, “The ‘Sex-Box’ Race for President”. McCullough employed strong, inaccurate statements such as “Mass Effect can be customized to sodomize whatever, whoever, however, the game player wishes,” and “with it’s ‘over the net’ capabilities virtual ... rape is just the push of a button away.” The game itself does not feature rape, as each romantic sub-plot involves consent on the part of the player and the NPC.

McCullough’s article was met with an outburst from the gaming community. McCullough issued an apology by saying, “I DO apologize to the gaming universe!” He then goes on to say, “I still do concur with my original position that the objectionable content in Mass Effect is still offensive”. McCullough’s handling of the situation was parodied by popular gaming website Penny Arcade. The resulting controversy eventually resulted in his article being taken down as a form of Self-censorship by Townhall.com.

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Mass Effect allows players to start romantic relationships with a handful of party members. Each romantic subplot has a short cut-scene that glimpses sex between the characters.

A New York Times article on the controversy compared the contents to U.S. evening network television.

On January 21, 2008, a Fox News segment "The Live Desk With Martha MacCallum" discussed Mass Effect with the heading '"Sexbox?" New video game shows full digital nudity and sex." The report itself was highly sensationalized. MacCallum stated that the game "leaves nothing to the imagination," features "the ability for players to engage in full graphic sex" where the player gets to decide what happens, cited critics as saying that the Mature-rated game is marketed to children and teenagers, and read a rebuttal from publisher Microsoft stating that the company abides by rating systems and provides monitoring tools for parents. Psychology specialist and author Cooper Lawrence and video game journalist Geoff Keighley were interviewed. The former described sexual content in video games as teaching their active users, adolescent boys, to consider women as objects of desire valued solely for their sexuality. She added that the game's player character is a man who decides how many women he wants to be with. Keighley focused on challenging the accuracy of previous statements, saying it is a choice to play the protagonist as a male or a female. He also described Mass Effect as having an optional, brief sexual situation ("with the side of an alien breast") as the culmination of a relationship in a 30+ hour game. Adding to Lawrence's inaccuracies is the fact that the main character is not allowed to be with more than one individual, sexually and romantically. MacCallum and Lawrence stated that they had not played the game.

Electronic Arts, the parent company of BioWare, requested a correction of "serious errors" from Fox News in an open letter. Fox News replied by stating that EA had been offered a chance to appear on the channel.

On the 25th, Lawrence, who had since watched someone play the game for about two-and-a-half hours, retracted her earlier statements in an interview. She added that she had been told the game was similar to pornography, and noted that she "has seen episodes of Lost that are more sexually explicit." In the interim, largely as a reaction from an offended gaming community, her latest book attracted a number of customer reviews on Amazon.com which rated it one star out of five. In an editorial, G4's Adam Sessler referred to the interview as a "litany of falsehoods" and parodied Lawrence's statements.