No, it has not become wrong. Per fdo's icon theme specification:
"Icons and themes are looked for in a set of directories. By default, apps should look in $HOME/.icons (for backwards compatibility), in $XDG_DATA_DIRS/icons and in /usr/share/pixmaps (in that order)."
The problem was the .png suffix, which is no longer legal.
No, it has not become wrong. Per fdo's icon theme specification: DIRS/icons and in /usr/share/pixmaps (in that order)."
"Icons and themes are looked for in a set of directories. By default, apps should look in $HOME/.icons (for backwards compatibility), in $XDG_DATA_
The problem was the .png suffix, which is no longer legal.