npm ignores "git+" during npm install

I have several dependencies in package.json specified as direct links to github repos:

"dependencies": {
  // omitted
  "gaze": "git+https://github.com/chebum/gaze.git",
}

When I checkout the project and perform npm install, a version of gaze is fetched from the global npm repo, not my github repo. I can confirm this by looking at the library source code.

If I later do npm install git+https://github.com/chebum/gaze.git I get a correct version of the library.

Why does npm override my package.json setting? I have no shrinkwrap file in the repo.

via Ivan Nikitin