They are on your desktop. Have you tried installing any game you bought through Steam lately? They all install a custom launcher / updater / stuff that ends up in startup.
Literally 0 games I own on steam have any startup items. Custom launchers yes, but not startup items. A few games have kernel anticheat, but they all start with the game.
The exception is FaceIt for counter strike, but that’s not distributed through steam and is entirely third-party.
