Had to look it up for curiosity’s sake.

In order to get fully set up, you will need to pay a $100.00 fee for each product you wish to distribute on Steam (the “Steam Direct Fee”)… This fee is not refundable, but will be recoupable in the payment made after your product has at least $1,000.00 Adjusted Gross Revenue for Steam Store and in-app purchases. Steamworks Partner Program

While not free, seems to be no overhead for the length of stay on Steam that I can see. Another site includes some more description which might add to the cost though

The cost to put a game on Steam depends on the type of game, the development budget [1], and the business model. To get a game onto Steam, developers need to pay a one-time registration fee of $100. After that, they will need to pay a 30% royalty fee. Additionally, developers may need to pay for marketing and other costs associated with the release of their game. source

Regardless, it’s just another unfortunate case of physical copies/backups>subscriptions or “licensing/rent” deals.

I’ve just recently ran into a new company advertising besides slot lights and it made the movie unwatchable. Slot lights will usually throw in 2-3 ad breaks which really annoy me because the audio levels are always pumped way up and it breaks the immersion in the narrative, followed with scattered smaller banner ads littered throughout the run time.

This new company slapped a huge banner ad that takes up 1/3 of the screen that’s present during the entire run time. Just insane when it comes to marketing because I can’t even remember the company and made me switch off. VPN + torrent will be a blessing when I can find better versions and get off these streaming sites that just carry them.