Tragedy

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?"

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!

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
 

Affinity Publisher Is Here
 
To see the launch annoucement event go here affin.co/live19 or watch on Vimeo here
On June 19th 2019 Affinity Publisher, our most ambitious app yet, was launched at Affinity Live 2019, streamed live from our HQ. 
We are over the moon to release the first version of Affinity Publisher, we think it will revolutionise desktop publishing. Much in the same way Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer have shaken up professional photo editing and graphic design.
StudioLink Complete integration of Affinity apps
With Affinity Publisher, you can directly link to your other Affinity apps through StudioLink. The first technology of its kind, this revolutionary feature takes the pain out of publishing by allowing you to instantly switch to the advanced photo editing features of Affinity Photo and precise vector tools of Affinity Designer without ever leaving the app. It’s the most fluid workflow ever conceived in a creative suite of applications, and the reason we named our apps Affinity.**
Fluid publishing powerhouse
Bring your vision to life with Affinity Publisher, the next generation of professional publishing software. From magazines, books, brochures, posters, reports and stationery to other creations, this incredibly smooth, intuitive app gives you the power to combine your images, graphics and text to make beautiful layouts ready for publication.
Engineered for advanced technology
Engineered with the same no-compromise vision as our acclaimed photo editing and graphic design apps, thousands of global professionals have contributed to the development of Affinity Publisher to meet the demands of the 21st century designer.
Spectacular layouts
With essentials like master pages, facing page spreads, grids, tables, advanced typography, text flow, full professional print output and other amazing features, Affinity Publisher has everything you need to create the perfect layout – whatever your project.
Double page spreads Live master pages, including nested master pages Image frames with intelligent scaling options Text wrapping with fine padding control Custom shaped text frames Link multiple text frames together across your document Advanced guides, grids and snapping Tables and custom table formats Text to match the power of your words
Free yourself from the constraints of tired, traditional text layouts. Let Affinity Publisher help you visualise your text in creative new ways and flow it seamlessly through your document.
Text styles: Link the style of your text across all pages in your document OpenType support: Open up all stylistic features of the latest OpenType fonts Text decorations: Add lines and borders to elements of your typography Drop caps: Add drop capitals to any paragraph Text on a path: Draw any curve and type along it Artistic text: Gain creative control over titling and other stand out text Flow options: Avoid orphaned or widowed lines, among many other features Baseline grid: Ensure the baseline of your text is aligned across all columns and spreads Perfect graphics
Whatever the brief calls for, you can rely on Affinity Publisher to handle all the standard file types you’d expect, leaving you free to create the most ambitious, content-rich combination designs, pulling in raster or vector assets from multiple sources.
Link or embed images with full resource manager Place PSD, AI, PDF, JPG, TIFF, PNG or Affinity files Pin graphics to float or be placed in line with your text Full colour control
Affinity Publisher can handle RGB, LAB, greyscale and CMYK colour spaces, with advanced control over professional colour requirements for print.
End-to-end CMYK Spot colour support Pantone library included ICC colour profiles More information can be found here and Tech Specs and a full feature lists are here
You can buy Affinity Publisher 1.7 now from the:
Affinity Store: macOS [10.9 or above] & Windows [10 (Anniversary Edition or above), Windows 8.1 & Windows 7 (Service Pack 1)] Mac App Store : macOS [10.7 or above] Microsoft Store: (Windows 10 Anniversary edition or later) If you have questions about Affinity Publisher please use this forum, as this thread is only for responses to the announcement.
** requires other Affinity (ver 1.7) applications to be installed on the same machine to enable the StudioLink feature

We are pleased to announce a major update for the Windows release of Affinity Photo, version 1.7.1
Changes in this build
The changes in Affinity Photo 1.7.1 (for Windows) over the recent release Affinity Photo 1.7.0 are as follows:
Fixed slow develop speeds Fixed sporadic crash with HSL range control Removed limits to shadows highlights effects Avoid over saturated shadows and washed out highlights New curve for highlights filter applied to bounded pixel formats Remap shadows and highlights slider ranges Avoid weird white balance for some old Sony cameras Fixed hang when scrolling through Slices panel Fixed custom panel height being reset on app start Fixed Gradient Colour selection closing popup immediately Reduced file sizes when starting from an image Allow selection changes during denoise filter preview Fixed crash when adding mask nodes (via assistant) when a quick mask is enabled Fixed crash when pressing Esc during a floating panel drag Removed resize gripper when the Status bar is visible Added double click to Assign/Convert profile dialog Fixed Denoise live filters when applying to renderer mask Fixed bounded formats Shadows / Highlights filter to leave the max channel value fixed Switched off split view when changing to a live filter Fixed crash when adding live filters with a Quick Mask Fixed Mixer brush crash Fixed sporadic crash with HSL adjustment Removed CR3 file type, as we don't support it yet  Fixed Posterise adjustment Fixed Develop Noise Reduction Luminance Details slider defaulting to -3% Added Focal Length to EXIF panel Fixed Selection Refinement only working once per document Fixed Checking and unchecking bottom layer in stack moves everything to the left Fixed switching documents with Live Filterdialog open locks app Fixed Threshold adjustment parameter does accepting typed values Fixed 32-Bit Preview panel being clipped when upgrading from 1.6 Fixed CMYK Colour profile setting the Grey profile to empty Fixed Noise not being applied on a gradient stop colour Fixed crashes in History and Layers panel Fixed brush preview outline still present when colour picking with Alt+click Enabled Resize document to work withphysical units Fixed EPS "Export text as curves" checkbox being disabled Fixed PDF export of RGB documents in greyscale documents Fixed sporadic crash on print Added preference for opening documents in a new floating container Fixed Adjustments thumbnails in the Layerspanel are not being updated Fixed failure in 1.7.0 to read custom keyboard shortcuts. Changes in 1.7.0 since 1.6.5
The changes in Affinity Photo for Windows 1.7.0 over the last Affinity Photo patch 1.6.5 (1.6.5 PK) are as follows:
EDR
Added support for EDR displays to Photo. When editing a 32-bit document. Brushes
Photo 1.7 introduces a new “sub-brush” mechanism, developed in conjunction with Paolo Limoncelli (DAUB® Brushes). This exciting feature allows any brush to have a list of other brushes attached which will draw at the same time. Each sub-brush has a fully separate and customisable set of dynamics. You can control when the sub-brushes are drawn and how they blend with the main brush. The brush engine in Photo has been improved. Symmetry (up to 32-way) is now supported - including on-canvas controls and optional mirroring. Wet edges and accumulation are now available on colour brushes and brushes with HSL variance. Brushes with multiple nozzle textures have always chosen the nozzle at random. In 1.7, the nozzle choice has a dynamic controller and ramp for greater control. All brush tools now support left and right arrow keys for rotation - a common feature request. Fixed ABR brush import (would ignore "random" controllers). RAW
The RAW processing engine in Photo has been rewritten - producing better results and improved performance. RAW files now load much more quickly. Reimplemented support for XTrans sensors. The denoise algorithm has been rewritten. It produces better results and takes advantage of the new GPU architecture. Hot pixel removal is now automatically performed by the Serif Labs engine. Profiled lens correction are more stable, apply more quickly, and can be toggled in the Develop UI. The histogram in the Develop persona is now presented in the output colour space - as opposed to always being linear. Develop now respects the output profile when previewing. Show which autofocus rectangles were in focus and which were selected by the camera (yellow, green respectively). A large number of new cameras are supported for RAW development (we will provide a list of the new supported cameras as soon as possible!). Filters
New “Procedural Texture” filter with advanced presets support. New “Voronoi” filter. Denoise, Clarity and Shadows / Highlights filters have been rewritten (using technology from the Develop Persona). More filters are now available as Live Filters - including the new Procedural Texture filter. Live filters have been rewritten to improve performance - especially when multiple filters are used in a document. Improved Polar to Rectangular and Rectangular to Polar filters. Added round dot type to the halftone filter. New “Lens Correction” filter - apply lens correction from the built-in lens database. Bilateral blur accuracy improvements. Adjustments
The HSL adjustment layer has been rewritten. It now supports custom hue ranges, a new algorithm, new UI and picker controls. The Levels adjustment layer now supports output levels - a common feature request. The White Balance adjustment layer has been rewritten. The Selective Colour adjustment layer has been rewritten. PSD import / export of adjustments has been improved. The Vibrance adjustment layer has been rewritten. The Recolour adjustment layer has gained a lightness slider. Layers
Layers Panel - added option for transparent background for thumbnails. Layers Panel - added multiple thumbnail size options. Layers Panel- added ability to tag layers with a colour - including PSD round-trip. Allow adding an empty group from the Layer menu. New “Duplicate Selection” item in Layer menu (old behaviour). Duplicate now duplicate the whole layer ignoring pixel selection. Alt / Option is now used to make a pixel selection from layer luminance. You can now also hold shift to add the result to the current selection. Hide / Show / Show All Layers options in layers menu. Ability to either rasterise or rasterise and trim a layer. Previously recorded macros will trim. Selections
Significant improvements to selection refinement. When using selection tools with no pixel selection, default to New / Add as appropriate. Added “Alpha Similarity” to Select Sampled Colour tool. Tools
Grouped tool shortcuts now default to needing the shift key held to cycle (option in preferences). The Crop tool has been rewritten - it now supports resolution changes, absolute pixel size and has a much improved preset mechanism. The Sponge Brush tool now gives more correct / pleasant results. Allow brush rotate / size key changes while dragging. Added a “Reveal Canvas” checkbox to the crop tool - defaults to off. Added new “Transform object separately” mode into Move tool. A general tools overhaul has been performed - providing editing of grids, guides, page origin, across multiple tools (not just in the Move tool) Patch tool now supports arrow keys for rotate / scale. All brush tools can now be axis constrained once brush has started - not just the pixel tool. History
“Alternate futures” for document history have been added. Traditionally, if you roll back the undo history then do something else all your changes after that point are lost. Photo will now display a small branch icon in the history tab when you do this. Pressing that button will cycle between all the different “futures” after that history entry - meaning you will never lose work you have done. The History page now has an “advanced” mode - which shows thumbnails and time info. I/O
HEIF images can now be loaded directly into Photo. If they contain a depth map, this will also be loaded as a second layer. Because depth maps are typically lower resolution than the main image, optional “smart” upsampling will be performed. TIFF export now has user selectable compression method. Added support for 12bit TIFF files. Introduced new metadata mining - completely rewritten to improve performance, flexibility and correctness. Metadata is now dynamically synchronised with your document - so if you resize then export, the values will be correct. Added Focal Length to metadata summary view. Added a button in general preferences to open a folder from which Photo will read LensFun-style XML files - if users wish to add / experiment with their own lens profiles. Support 16bit CMYK TIFF import. General
New ability to control how macros are scaled / aligned when playing back. Added an “Assets” panel to Photo. New cube setup mode for grids. Add “Fill with Primary / Secondary” to the Edit menu for fast access. The batch process dialog now fully supports expressions for height and width - available constants are “w”, “h” and “dpi”. “Lock guides” added to menus. Support for drag dropping .afstyles into Photo. Support for drag dropping .afpalette into Photo. Photo now supports custom document presets - a popular feature request. A new blend mode - Linear Burn - has been added. New “Move inside / outside” commands have been added - useful for quick operations on clipping masks etc. The Hard Mix blend mode has been improved. New provider options have been added to the stock panel - support for Unsplash, Pexels and Pixabay. All of these providers offer full-resolution stock imagery which is free to use. Numerous text improvements have been made - including new features. Significant stability improvements when working on non-local files (network shares, USB drives, etc.). Significant PDF import / export improvements and fixes. Huge macro and batch processing improvements. New welcome screen layout and all new samples.  Numerous other bug fixes - too many to list!? This thread is for commenting on this announcement. Please do not post bugs or problems that you find when using this version of the software in this thread, instead make a new thread in the Photo Bugs on Windows section and questions about usage go in the Desktop Questions forum.
UPDATING TO THIS VERSION (Free for existing customers)
For purchases from the Affinity Store: Each time you start the software it will check for updates and offer any available update, or it can be downloaded from here. The new build will install over the top of any earlier version, with no need to uninstall. Alternatively you can log into the affinity store here and find the order in your account and use the download button in there.
For purchases from the Microsoft Store: These are done automatically by the operating system (next time you start the application)