Yes, the 70% passing score was set by our team.
As you saw from your googling, the official JLPT score system is super confusing.
This is to keep the scores consistent even if the test difficulty varies each edition. They adjust how many points each question is worth based on how well test-takers perform on it.
So 90 points out of 180 is not equivalent to 50% correct answers because easier questions give you less points.
Because their system is so intricate and not fully public, we can’t perfectly replicate it. That’s why we’ve set our own 70% overall pass mark for our mock tests.