Of course do they own the commission money. The user pay Whentai and WH transfer that to the artist.
No User on this site is paying the artist directly, thats is the point of this site.
Whentai acts as middleman in other to protect the User from fraud/scam by any artist.
You pay as a Whentai user by buying Evs (artificial currency created by Whentai) and use those Evs to access Whentai's exclusive online marketplace to create commissions with artists.
After the work is finished and uploaded, the artist will receive the agreed amount of EVS that was noted in the commission. Whentai will convert the Evs into money (USD) for the artist.
The only problem you have is that you don't get your money or rather that you now need to reach an minimum value of $100. to get paid by Whentai.
Which is terrible situation for the artist and isnt either great for Whentai reputation, credibility trustworthiness and whatever you wanna add.
However, no one but the artist and Whentai knows the payment terms, and the artist has almost certainly been banned from talking about it.
Just ask yourself "Are they allowed to change the minimum withdrawal amount without prior notice?"
There must be something written about in the payment terms.
If the answer is yes,: You agreed to the terms, so why complain now about them?
If the answer is no: You getting scammed.
The technical limitations that led Whentai to increase the minimum payout for artist, is probably that the user can't buy Evs anymore.
Paypal don't work and it was said that the only other way for buying Evs isn't working either, so Whentai himself can't generate money.
What do you think are the sources of income for Whentai?
User buy Ev's and the advertising on this site and probably some other contracts since the image of this site are used in browser games.
What you think is the main source of those incomes?
I believe is the buying of the Evs part since they want users to become VIP members.
In order to become a VIP member, you need to earn 1000 Evs, which is $324.93 or $339.96 if you just buy the Evs.
Otherwise you will need to invest a lot of time in order to win a total amount of 1000 Evs by the weekly free Evs giveaway event, which will generate some value for Whentai himself otherwise such an event would not happen.
If you have no income or decreases income, the next logical step is to cut your expenses.
If you cut the expenses for mantaining the website, the very next big expense are the artists
They delay those costs by increasing the amount required for payout.
It will surely change after the technical issues are resolved and people can buy Evs again, if people buy EV's then.