Is runtime verification applicable to cheat detection?

We investigate the prospect of applying runtime verification to cheat detection. Game implementation bugs are extensively exploited by cheaters, especially in massively multiplayer games. As games are implemented on larger scales and game object interactions become more complex, it becomes increasingly difficult to guarantee that high-level game rules are enforced correctly in the implementation. We observe that although implementing high-level rules in code is complex because of interference between rules, checking for rule compliance at runtime is simple because only a single rule is involved in each check. We demonstrate our idea by applying the Java-MaC runtime verification system to a simple game to detect a transaction bug that is common in massively multiplayer games.