Frank Mu.

We are pleased to announce an update for the Windows release of Affinity Photo 2, version 2.0.4
This build is available as a (sandboxed) MSIX application installer and as an (unsandboxed) MSI/EXE traditional installer.
Please see this FAQ thread for instructions on how to access the unsandboxed MSI/EXE version.
The changes in Affinity Photo 2 for Windows 2.0.4 (those made since the last release Affinity Photo 2 for Windows 2.0.3) are as follows:
Fixes & Improvements:  (since the last release 2.0.3)
Develop Persona: Enabling White Balance on non RAW files crashes Affinity Photo or was not functioning correctly. [AFP-5803] Fixed tint value in CR3 files[AFP-4617] Improved timezone handling in Metadata panel StudioLink incompatible with licensing used for businesses. Fixed non-ASCII characters not being accepted in license usernames Fix New Document sometimes showing Letter* instead of A4 Cannot set stroke width if units not set to points. [AFD-6276] Saving files may reduce file size in some circumstances (example was a 2gb file with no embedded data) Some image resources are being replaced by others from the same document when copy/paste was used to insert them. [AFB-7053] Assorted stability fixes Help and Localisation updates. Assorted other Licensing and Registration improvements To get notified when any new releases are made please follow the latest releases thread by clicking here
UPDATING TO THIS VERSION (which is free for all V2 users)
The software version can be seen on the splash screen and the About dialog (in Help > About Affinity Photo).
If you’ve purchased from the Affinity Store — each time you start the Affinity Store software it will check for updates and offer any available update. The latest update will install over the top of any earlier version, with no need to uninstall. You can download the latest installer by logging into the affinity store here and find the order in your account and use the "Download" button in there. Alternatively, this new release (and previous versions of Affinity Photo for Windows) can be downloaded from this link. (that installer is NOT for Windows Store purchases and needs a product key).
If you’ve purchased from the Microsoft Store — Microsoft Store updates are done automatically by the operating system (each time you start the application). If this does not happen for you, open the Windows Store app and click the three dots in the top right corner of the app and then go to Downloads and Updates. Click Get Updates. This should hopefully force the update to show.

With the roll out of Affinity Designer/Photo/Publisher for Windows version 2.0.4, Serif are making available Unsandboxed installers (also known here as MSI/EXE installers). These installers will be made for all future V2 release builds going forward and will autoupdate from within the application (checking for updates on each run, like the sandboxed version does)
Serif do not recommend or support mixtures of MSIX and MSI on the same computer. You should only use either all sandboxed or all unsandboxed,  particularly if you have more than one Affinity V2 application installed.
You can now download (and install) Windows unsandboxed MSI/EXE installer files (as well as Windows sandboxed MSIX installer files) from these store pages.
1. From the  V2 Universal Download page
 

Click on the words "Looking for Windows MSI installers?"
 

2. Individual V2 application Download pages, found here
Affinity Designer 2
Affinity Photo 2
Affinity Publisher 2
Click on "Also available EXE (size MB)" 

3. LICENCES AND DOWNLOADS pages in your account
 

Click on the words "Looking for Windows MSI installers?"

For example, I cannot integrate the apps into some other programmes and some scripts do not work due to the lack of rights for the installation directory. My backup strategy is bound to a freely selectable installation path. Moving to a partition with a larger block size than 4k is also not possible, etc.  
The msix installer actually only brings disadvantages for the user. The information in the FAQ about the advantages is partly wrong. But this has already been discussed in detail in another thread. 

I think it's not a problem of buying the app before the discount expires, but trying the already purchased version so that it can possibly be refund before the 14 day period expires.

@AshI have enjoyed using Affinity Photo for several years and appreciate your more than generous pricing, the fantastic learning opportunities provided through the past years, the friendly and prompt in answering questions and solving problems over the years.  For me the Affinity team has always delivered a great product, lets me doing editing I would not be able to do otherwise, and enjoy improving my skills.  Thank you to your whole team.
Peace
Marvin

Thanks for this no subscription model..
And one major thing you guys are missing is the language support..please find a solution to bring Indic languages font support...it will open a big market for you.. imagine a country like india starts using affinity..it will boost your economy as well..

Hi All,
Well, it’s been a pretty crazy week since the launch of V2!
This has been a real labour of love for us over the last year or so, and I can’t even begin to describe how hard the development team have worked on it. Not only getting the V2 apps launched, but also of course finally bringing Publisher to iPad. 
With this being our first paid-for upgrade there has understandably been a lot of feedback / questions around future updates and our pricing policies. I thought it was worth addressing / clarifying our position on some of these personally...
Updates to V2 moving forward
Buying V2 not only gets you all the new features you have seen, but we have various updates planned – including many more new features and improvements – which you will get for free. This will continue until such a time that V3 is released. We’re not sure exactly when V3 will be, but I can confirm we are not going to move to anything as regular as an annual upgrade cycle as has been speculated.
It’s worth saying too that V2 does include many under-the-hood changes to our underlying technology, and we have also been investing in several new areas of research recently. Some of these haven’t manifested themselves into new features yet, but overall V2 does give us a better platform to develop on moving forward and I’m sure you will be pleased with the updates V2 will receive.
Updates to V1 moving forward
While we did say on the FAQ that V1 would no longer receive any updates, I want to clarify that was about new feature updates. We will be updating V1 to fix any critical problems caused by operating system updates in the future. So if the next version of macOS breaks V1 we will endeavour to fix it. There will be a point in time when continuing to maintain V1 in this way will not be tenable, but certainly for the foreseeable future we will continue to patch. In fact, we have an update to V1 queued up for release very shortly with some fixes for Ventura and issues caused by a recent Windows security / quality update. 
We will update our FAQ shortly to make that clearer for everyone.
Offer period
In case you didn’t see, I’m pleased to confirm we have decided to run this initial launch offer until 14th December to give everyone the best chance possible to get it if they wish / have a decent amount of time to trial it. 
Upgrade pricing
It’s been really hard to see some of the comments about us not looking after our existing customers – we’re pretty devasted that anyone feels like that to be honest. But the fact is we felt our hands were tied somewhat with being able to offer upgrade pricing in a fair way. The main reason for this was App Store customers (which make up around 35% of our userbase). The problems with that are two-fold: firstly, we didn’t have a way from within V1 to validate an App Store purchase receipt to reliably ensure customers who were entitled to an upgrade could get one; and secondly, we could not find a good way for people to get that discount via the App Store. Us pushing upgrade customers to go exclusively via our own site (including customers who were previously acquired via the app stores) may also have put us in violation of App Store Ts & Cs which we were obviously concerned about.
I’m not saying that these issues were completely insurmountable, but any solutions we came up with would be messy, and most importantly could have resulted in some bona fide V1 customers struggling to get validated and claim their discount. We certainly don’t have the support resource here if we ended up needing to manually validate tens of thousands of receipts for example.
The only option we felt was safe to move forward with was a general launch offer, which would guarantee that every V1 customer could get the discount, whether they purchased directly through us or the App Stores. We knew a side effect of that would mean some new customers would end up receiving that same discount – but we felt that was a better option than V1 customers missing out. It’s also worth saying that while there has been some good press about V2, all our main marketing has been via email and through social media to our followers. In other words, we felt ok about it because we knew the vast majority of people who would find out about it or take advantage of the offer would be existing customers. I would be surprised if over the offer period customers upgrading from V1 didn’t make up more than 90% of our sales.
Overall I do believe us giving a 40% discount, along with the addition of the new Universal Licence of course, is offering fantastic value for money for those who want to upgrade. 
However, taking on board some of the feedback there is something extra we can do – we will offer a new free bundle of content exclusively for V1 customers upgrading to V2 as an extra thank you for your support. I’ve seen this suggested by a number of customers and it’s a great idea as it does remove the App Store conflict entirely. 
We’ll need a little time to put something together, but all customers who previously registered or purchased V1 and have since upgraded to V2 will receive a voucher code for this via email as soon as we can.
A comment on no subscription
I do want to say that some of the points above are exactly the reason why software companies move to subscription. Whatever you do with upgrade pricing, you still have the issue of customers who bought the previous version 3 months ago vs. those who have had it 2+ years. Offering perpetual licences also gives the additional overhead of needing to maintain the previous version longer than you would if everyone was on subscription / generally always on the latest version.
We are a small team so some of these complications are not ideal — all we really want to do is focus on developing our latest codebase, push out regular updates and continue with our mission to make great creative software accessible to everyone. 
But it does need to be funded somehow. We know you love our no-subscription model, but there also needs to be a level of appreciation that the alternative is having paid-for upgrades from time to time. That unfortunately comes with its own problems.
All of that said, I have to say we have been blown away with the response to V2 - around 3 times as many people have upgraded in the last week than we expected - and we really can't thank you enough for the support you have shown. More than anything the success of this upgrade puts us in a great place to continue investing heavily in development which is ultimately what it's all about, and we’re super excited to crack on with some great updates coming next year!
All the best,
Ash

Yes, we will be providing MSI installers to customers who require them. This FAQ will be updated with links to MSI downloads when they become available.
Yes. These are now available
 

Not "every software company" does what you suggest.  Many don't
You are not being attacked by "rich people"
You haven't wasted any money on V1 because V1 still works and does what you paid for. You haven't lost anything.
You got a good deal on V1, it still works and will continue to work.
It is better value than any other system out there.

The time before V1 and V2 is about 8 years.
Even if V3 comes out in 5 months V2 (like V1) will continue to work and NOT be obsolete. None of its functionality will cease.
Though V3 is liky to be at least 5 years out.  I bought V1 (without a discount) 11 months before V2 came out.
NOTE I was still using Adobe CS6 from 11 years ago (untill I bought Afinity V1 a year ago)  because I can't afford the Adobe subscription  service.
Serif periodically do discounts of 25% and 30% at least twice a year so you can get V2 later..  There is no rush as you are not using affinity in business.

Life is what it is and it isn't fair. However Affinity do a very good job of producing very good software at a very low price. They get in 99% right.

When Serif first released APhoto I was offered a discounted price to buy it. I was certainly not an existing or loyal user at the time.
I took up their offer and have used the software ever since to do my work and make loads of money over the years.
Now they are offering me and new users 40% off for the next Version of their software.
That seems to me that Serif are rewarding their existing customers and allowing the next generation of users to get the same opportunities and earnings potential that I got many years ago

Why should new users not also be given the same opportunity I had, many years ago, to get the software at a discounted price?
If your sole argument is that you should have got a better discount than new users you are shooting yourself in the foot.
The bigger discount Serif offers to new users the more will purchase it and Serif can grow quicker and thus implement all the fixes and new features we all want

"Be careful what you wish for" and "Don't cut off your nose to smite your face" are two phrases that spring to mind

If you claim to be loyal customers then you should be supporting anything that helps Serif grow not whinging on like a 12 year old child that believes he should get better/bigger Christmas presents than his 10 year old brother because he was the first born.
Some people need to grow up and see the bigger picture

If 15 percent errors occur with MSI installations, then Serif has done something seriously wrong in the installation files. i have never experienced this with any other program. 

Hi Frank Mu.
We are currently working on an MSI installer for those who would like them, we do not have an ETA at the moment but hope this won't take long.
Lee

Hi all. Thanks for your patience over the weekend when our offices were closed.
We've had a meeting this morning and decided to ALSO offer MSI installers to those people who would like them. I can't tell you when this will happen, as there is engineering work that will be required to allow this to happen, but we hope it won't be long.
Thanks for your feedback!

THIS is the WORST DECISION from SERIF.
They claim you have the best software. BUT INSTALL HERE NO OTHER CHOICE.
NO HAPPY WITH THEM.
Bring back the OLD INSTALLER. My IT DEPT are wiping SERIF software from the network. YOU NEED A CHOICE. IT dept wont put up with this.
Gary
 

I never liked apps without a proper installer. Not transparent, no choices. Only problems.

Hello,
When you buy a tool of any kind... camera for example, you don't ask the customer to be an expert in electronics and optics to assist the design shortcuts of the manufacturers.
The problem with computers is the tradition that comes from the origins of this tool and that forces us to think that a customer must also be a geek or at least comfortable with the intricacies of this technology.
Affinity is a tool and nothing else, no more than Win11 or OS thingy:
you buy, you install, you use the tool.
The expertise lies in the handling of the tool and not in circumventing the inadequacies of designers who still think that it is the clients who must adapt to their whims and not the other way round.
Mickey Mouse has instilled in people's heads that it's normal to buy buggy, poorly designed products...and this idea persists.

I completely agree with them.  I bought the universal licence blindly because I was convinced of Serif and their products and price and update policy. The price is still ok. But I still applied for the refund. I hope that if many do it, it will lead to a rethink at Serif and they will provide an MSI installer as an option. Then I will buy the Suite again. 

I completely agree with them.  I bought the universal licence blindly because I was convinced of Serif and their products and price and update policy. The price is still ok. But I still applied for the refund. I hope that if many do it, it will lead to a rethink at Serif and they will provide an MSI installer as an option. Then I will buy the Suite again. 

This works only if the cluster size of the target drive is 4k. This is of course a bug from Microsoft not from Serif 

I completely agree with them.  I bought the universal licence blindly because I was convinced of Serif and their products and price and update policy. The price is still ok. But I still applied for the refund. I hope that if many do it, it will lead to a rethink at Serif and they will provide an MSI installer as an option. Then I will buy the Suite again. 

This works only if the cluster size of the target drive is 4k. This is of course a bug from Microsoft not from Serif 

I will be getting my universal license refunded. Installing it as an app has destroyed my workflow. E.g. calling from other programs does not work anymore.   Serif has described some of the disadvantages in their FAQ. The only advantage is that Serif has less support requests.  The user has only disadvantages. The workarounds are an imposition. Serif has lost a lot of sympathy with me because of this.

I will be getting my universal license refunded. Installing it as an app has destroyed my workflow. E.g. calling from other programs does not work anymore.   Serif has described some of the disadvantages in their FAQ. The only advantage is that Serif has less support requests.  The user has only disadvantages. The workarounds are an imposition. Serif has lost a lot of sympathy with me because of this.

I will be getting my universal license refunded. Installing it as an app has destroyed my workflow. E.g. calling from other programs does not work anymore.   Serif has described some of the disadvantages in their FAQ. The only advantage is that Serif has less support requests.  The user has only disadvantages. The workarounds are an imposition. Serif has lost a lot of sympathy with me because of this.

I've seen this solution but it is unacceptable.
Not only do these links need to be manually created, but they often don't work for workflow purposes AND they have NO resources inside them.
So they look like this

 
Instead of like this