With the upcoming Standard Ban List 25.08, Info Bounty is now banned and I will miss it.

I have been a casual player for 12 years and I think my insights into netrunner are very different to those of players that are actually good at the game and so I want to write this review as a farewell to a cool card.

the mark mechanic

There only ever were a total of six cards using the mark mechanic.
Tunnel Vision and Virtuoso always felt a bit under powered.
Backstitching is overshadowed by more reliable bypassing cards and even most all-in Mercury bypass decks seem to skip it.

Overall I feel like the whole mechanic always fell behind the more universally useful charge and sabotage mechanics introduced in the same cycle.
Which is sad, because it's an interesting mechanic.

Carpe Diem

Carpe Diem was always the most simple and easiest to include of all the mark cards and it had great synergy with Info Bounty.

On the turn you install Info Bounty, you could play Carpe Diem right afterwards to identify the mark, thus potentially triggering Info Bounty on it's first turn.
(Which it can't do on it's own, without another mark card.)
The other way around, when Info Bounty was already installed you knew your mark at sart of turn and therefore before playing Carpe Diem, making it a lot more predicatable.
(Firing Carpe Diem blindly always felt weird.)

I don't think I would play Carpe Diem without another mark card that stays on the table. Hot take: Banning Info Bounty practically banned Carpe Diem as well.

Identities

Of course, all of the above assumes you don't start the game with a mark card already installed as your identity.

And personally, I think, not being Sable is the default case that should be considered when looking at Info Bounty and Carpe Diem.
3x Carpe Diem with 2x Info Bounty added greatly to the economy of any deck and I regularly chose this option for almost all criminal ids.

Removing this option not only hurts crim economy in general, it also reduces the number of viable job (or connection) resources for other great synergies.
In particular, it feels like kicking at Az McCaffrey while he's already on the ground.
For the same reason, this ban hits Open Market and with it the Baz decks that rely on it.

Also, Zahya Sadeghi wanted to hammer centrals anyways and gained a lot from Info Bounty.

final thoughts

I think this ban hurts the mark mechanic as a whole more than a ban on Sable would have, because it leaves us with only Sable herself and Carpe Diem in Sable decks as viable mark cards.

And I also fear that this ban hurts other crim identities more than it actually hurts Sable, further reducing game variability.

I hope I'm wrong.

Even if you do not use other card using the mark mechanic, this is often better than Security Testing, because it let you breach the central server. That is great, unless you absolutely need the breach replacement effect. Because it is unique, having multiple copies of it is not great. Of course, at 2, it "reimburse" itself after the first run, so it is not as immediate as Security Testing.

At 2 influences, it could be splashed out of faction, but you will probably find better use of that influence.

If you make the use of the mark mechanic, this is an auto inclusion in your deck. If you are Az McCaffrey: Mechanical Prodigy, it should also be an auto inclusion. Otherwise, if you are a criminal runner, you probably might still have one copy of it. Drawing it early is pretty good, but it becomes nearly useless if you draw it late, because of the setup involved.

The art and quote remind me of looking at Yelp or any other travel blogs to decide where to go and where NOT to go. The colors and details are amazing here, while at the same time offering a different way to present Nyusha "Sable" Sintashta: Symphonic Prodigy. Well done and well balanced.