CrossFire Memberships?

While in-game some guy started complaining about how axes/shovel should never have been made, but skipping over that part it ended up leading him to say that he pays for a 29.99 monthly membership to CF and that he has been playing this version for 3 years. I know that this game has only been for 2 years (exactly 2 years in a week), but is there some membership for CF? He told me to "check" before I kept talking so yea...