Peter Mohrbacher made a podcast post that explains what Patreon is up to WAY better than Patreon themselves https://www.patreon.com/posts/patreon-fees-15783170

In text: They're going to be charging everyone's pledge upfront instead of one big mass collection at the end of each month (so instantly for monthly creators and the patron is billed on the monthly anniversary that they pledged, and the instant a paid post is made for per-release creators) but they for some reason figured they had to change the fee system separately before implement the new charge timing.

Had they implemented the new charge timing without changing who got the fees artists would have been eating even more fees with the lowest fee system they could come up with FOR charge upfront: 2.9% + $0.35. It tackles the theft problem, but unfortunately it changes the landscape entirely for how most artists work their campaigns.

You can read their article over here: https://blog.patreon.com/updating-patreons-fee-structure/

For me: I'm ok with this, but I'm hanging back and waiting to see what people do and how Drip looks before I pick my system of choice. In the meantime I have set up a Ko-fi http://www.furaffinity.net/view/25679138/ and will be figuring out a side streaming campaign for anyone wanting to support/get their face in some practice art and shenanigans, but that'll be late January at the soonest.