I’ve seen this opinion both brokered here and elsewhere (both in general and in response to this article). I think Banning parasite is straight up one of the worst ideas you can have. There were a couple people saying stuff along these lines (someone responded on Reddit saying they thought the game was unbalanced because the Runner could destroy the Corp’s board, and the Corp can’t do the opposite). I’m thinking about writing a full second article about my ideas here because I think they are really important, but I’ll just respond here a bit on why Parasite is important and why banning it is a bad idea (and why Sifr is the one that needs to go).
Fundamentally, the Core of what makes Netrunner a great game is the degree of interaction the two sides have, and a large chunk of this comes from the Runner’s ability to interact with every portion of the Corp’s deck. The runner can destroy assets, upgrades, installed ice, steal agendas, access cards from hand, etc. Its core to the game that even ice aren’t permanent, and Parasite represents the first mechanic for doing so.
The most common complaint I then see about Parasite is that “oh, it would be fine on its own, but datasucker and clone chip make it too easy to destroy ice”. The thing about this is Datasucker as your method of destroying Ice adds a large degree of interaction to the game. Because it only effects central servers, and the most you can get in 1 turn is 4, the Corp inherently has a great deal of control over the Runner’s access to Datasuckers (especially with CVS, which can turn off Archives for free). Sifr of course breaks this because the Corp has no control over the size of the ice a runner is able to destroy. The fact Sifr gets rid of anyway to interact with it because there are no resources the Corp has control over (and Hardware is the most resilient card type) is the reason Sifr is broken.
Finally, there are meta and balance considerations. If you actually look at the top 16 worlds, you’ll notice something. Half the Anarch decks don’t have parasite (Siphon), and the other half only run 3x and run 1x piece of recursion (Deja Vu, which isn’t primarily about recurring parasites). Temujin Whizz, the Regass Anarch deck that was running 3x times, was largely using Parasite as a means of overcoming Anarch weakness to Gearcheck (I talked to Dyer / Alex White at one point who were talking about CUTTING the parasites, but decided that the gearcheck usage made them worthwhile). Neither of the Shaper decks in the top 16 (the faction most commonly splashing for using with datasucker) used it either. Dumblefork typically debated between running 3rd parasite or 3rd Faust.
The truth is before Sifr, Parasite was hardly dominating the meta, and it was a card that strengthened Anarch’s weakness and identity (as the Faction that works primarily around attacking the Corp’s boardstate). Sifr immediately broke Parasite because there was now zero counterplay to saving your Ice, and is the card that is fundamentally at fault. If you REALLY think Clone Chip / Parasite are broken together, just Restrict them from being in the same deck. I think its wrong, but Parasite is fundamental to the identity of Anarch as a faction.
Finally, what happens if you Ban parasite? Well, ice in this game has been balanced around the idea that parasite can deal with certain kinds of Ice and the idea the Corp can’t just install Ice forever and create super taxing server (which is boring and incredibly Toxic IMO). My guess is when banned Next Ice EtF immediately becomes the strongest deck that everyone plays, which is honestly a horrible future for the game. Faction balance would be completely out of whack, and install ice forever do nothing is the most toxic Corp strategy (similarily to why install recurring credits do nothing is the most toxic runner one).
In summary:
Netrunner is a game about interacting with the Corp board state, Parasite lets you do this.
Parasite is fundamental to the healthy Anarch archetypes (no AI, no Siphon)
Before Sifr Parasite was not breaking the game, and was relavily weak (not recurred, no decks relying on it).
Banning Parasite creates a toxic enviornment where Next Ice dominates and Corps don’t need to think in order to win, because their ice just exponentially scales into victory.