It did have this:
> as of v11 this module uses the peacenotwar module.
Over on its NPM site: https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-ipc
And as far as i can tell they bumped up the major version by a digit. Whether or not that counts as a "Bright red warning" i don't know but personally i believe that a warning notice + a major version bump should be enough. Those who don't care about that would most likely not care about a bright red warning on the repo page either.
It's clearly a questionable thing to do, but is it illegal?